The Ministry of Education and Youth says it will be providing 600 new school spaces for the coming academic year under its start-a-school programme, to accommodate students in grades seven and 10.

"These grades were selected to facilitate the students sitting the Grade Six Achievement Test and Grade Nine Achievement Test," Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson said during her contribution to the 2007/08 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

"The schools will ultimately hold about 1,000 to 1,200 students; but, in the first instance, starting this year, we will build a structure that can hold about 300 children and then we will add to the school as we go along, with the hope of completing quite a few of them in the course of this year," the minister said.

Three sites identified

Under the start-a-school programme, the ministry had identified three sites, namely Sandy Bay and Foga Road in Clarendon, and Dunbeholden in St. Catherine, to build these schools.

"In terms of Dunbeholden, we had negotiated for the acquisition of lands at Dunbeholden, which are still available to us. The National Environment and Planning Agency has advised us not to construct the school at this time as they have concerns about a particular water aquifer that's located there and we have complied," Mrs. Henry-Wilson said.

"We have taken steps to identify a new site and I would like to assure everyone that the students who were assigned to this school have already been assigned t institutions," she added.

The minister also noted that the construction of new spaces for grades eight, nine and 11 would be completed by September 2008.