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| (L-R) Mr Anthony Jones retired Principal and Mrs Alice Swanston Principal of the Charlestown Primary School
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CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (July 03, 2006) -- Retired Principal Mr Anthony Jones has said that one of the key features of service excellence is for teachers to identify the interests of students and to put measures in place to ensure that every child on Nevis developed to their full potential.
He was at the time delivering the feature address during the Charlestown Primary School 2006 graduation ceremony on June 29, 2006. The event which was held under the theme "Striving for excellence" saw 58 students graduating to secondary school was held at the Cultural Cultural Centre, after inclement weather forced the school to change the venue.
Mr Jones told the teachers that service excellence involved training, retraining and refresher courses but it was important to do research and find new ways of imparting information to their students if they were to deliver service excellence.
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| The Charlestown Primary Schools graduating class of 2006. |
To Principal Mrs Alice Swanston, he said in order to allow continued excellence, she must serve both teachers and students. "You play a pivotal role in ensuring you provide and environment that encourages job satisfaction. You must reach out to all teachers and you have to come up with new ways to satisfy your disgruntled workers. Disgruntled workers are destructive in any institution, he said.
Mr Jones urged the graduands to remember their graduation celebration and to make it the first in a series of memorable celebrations and that they should find something to celebrate everyday.
"Sometimes you do little things, grand things for your parents for yourselves for the old lady down the road and we just brush them aside but these are things you should value these are things that you should really celebrate . Make this day the first in a series of grand celebrations," he said.
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| Class Valedictorian Ms Keandra Maynard
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He reminded the students that they should take all the skills they had acquired at primary school to secondary school; to read for 10 minutes everyday; continue to improve in language and maths and also in other subject areas; try to score 90 percent and over in all areas but in other to attain this they had to study every night.
Regarding sporting skills, Mr Jones pleaded to the students to take them along to the next phase of their education and to pursue them with a passion. He said, too often when children arrived at secondary school they forgot about playing sports "but a physically fit child performs better at academics than one who is not fit," the former Principal pointed out.
Meantime, Mr Swanston announced that the Charlestown Primary School had been on target with its school improvement plan for the past 2005/2006 academic school year. While delivering the school's annual report she indicated that the school had improved in areas including maths, reading, spelling music and sports.
According to Mrs Swanston, the theme chosen for the school year was "Striving for excellence" which helped to keep both teachers and students focused throughout the year, bearing in mind that excellence was never an accident. The staff had to plan different strategies to ensure that the students kept moving along the educational road and striving for excellence.
"The main objectives outlined in the school improvement plan were the improvement of Mathematics, reading, social studies, discipline, management and physical education. Even though all the projects outlined in the plan were not completed we were able to achieve most of the objectives outlined," she explained.
She took the opportunity to appeal to persons to adopt a classroom in the school's effort to tile all its classrooms during the summer vacation through its "Project Tiling".
Mrs Swanston commended her team of teachers noting that neither the Ministry of Education nor parents were aware of their hard work at school.
"As a staff we have our shortcomings but they measure very little when compared to the effort we make to assist our students. Our achievements over the years and this year were due to a team effort, I think that the Charlestown Primary School has had a successful year and you have contributed to it," she said.
~~Adz:Right~~Mrs Swanston told the graduands that they should continue their hard work and be reminded of the words of encouragement that they have received from herself and her staff during their days at the Charlestown Primary School.
The Principal also congratulated the graduands on achieving a milestone and offered special praise to Master Jayquan Phillip who was named the most outstanding boy with a 100 percent result in Science at the Test of Standards Examinations; Ms Kherah Rawlins for the highest results in Social Studies; Ms Patriel Stapleton for being the most outstanding girl for the Test of Standard and attaining the highest result in Mathematics; Ms Trish Taylor for attaining the overall best results in grade 6-2 and Ms Keandra Maynard for receiving the over all best results in grade 6-1 the highest results received at the school for Test of Standards in Language and for also emerging as the Class Valedictorian.
Ms Maynard while delivering her valedictory speech, called on her fellow graduands to come together and to keep striving for excellence at high school through perseverance "in that way we would achieve all our goals." She also thanked their teachers, parents and members of the community and noted that their words of encouragement did not fall on deaf ears.
Other remarks came from Mrs Versalie Powell, Education Officer and Mrs Vernitha Collins a parent who delivered the Vote of Thanks. Mr Edson Elliott Principal of the Charlestown Secondary School was the chairman while Father George Agar the school's Chaplin for the past seven years delivered the invocation. The ceremony was sprinkled with performances from the graduands, the school choir and Grade 4 students.
