In a chapter in his “History” devoted to “Religion, Education, and
Social Progress, from 1839 to 1865,” Gardner makes no reference to
Secondary Education, unless the foundation of Calabar College in 1843
for the training of a native Baptist Ministry can be so considered.
In 1865 an Act (28 Vic., c. 23) was passed by which the Government
appropriated the sums of money deposited from time to time in the Public
Treasury by various charities and institutions at varying rates of
interest, and became responsible for the payment of perpetual annuities
in lieu thereof, thereby preventing for the future so far as those funds
were concerned any of that misapplication alluded to in the reports of
the Committee of 1791.
Under that able organizer, Sir John Peter Grant (1866–1874), elementary
education was put on a sound basis of encouragement and support; by him
was also founded the too ambitious and short-lived College at Spanish
Town which aimed at providing a university education for a community
that was not yet ready for it.
During the governorship of Sir Anthony Musgrave the needs of Secondary
Education—which was defined as being the encouragement of education of a
higher grade “among those classes of the community who would value it,
if placed within their reach, but whose means do not enable them to send
their children to Europe for the purpose of obtaining it”—received full
consideration.
By the creation in 1879 of the Jamaica Schools Commission, which
exercises over endowed schools in Jamaica the same sort of supervision
formerly exercised by the Charity Commissioners in England over English
schools, means were afforded for placing the old endowed schools of the
island under suitable management. The Jamaica High School was
established, the Jamaica Scholarship was started, and the Cambridge
Local Examinations were held for the first time in 1882; and later in
1891 the University of London was induced to hold its examinations in
the colony.
The Wesleyan Church started their High School at York Castle, in St.
Ann, in 1876; and the Institute of Jamaica for the encouragement of
Literature, Science and Art was founded by the Government in 1879.
In 1892 a Secondary Education Law (32 of 1892) was passed, empowering
the Governor in Privy Council on the recommendation of the Board of
Education—a Board formed with the main object of advising on elementary
education—to declare any important centre of population to be without
adequate provision for secondary education and to establish a school
there, to be managed by a local committee of management under the
supervision of the Board. A subsequent act of the Legislature
transferred the duty of supervision of all such schools from the Board
of Education to the Jamaica Schools Commission. In 1911 the secondary
schools of the island were first inspected and reported on by an English
school inspector.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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