Classes in a Church Hall, Then a 100 Per Cent Pass Rate: The Portmore School Built on Church of God Land

• Cedar Grove Academy in Portmore sits on land owned by the New Testament Church of God
• When it opened in 2013, unfinished, 100 students were taught in the church’s hall
• The school was being built at a cost of $600 million
• Five years on, its first CSEC cohort recorded 100 per cent passes in nine subjects

Cedar Grove Academy in Portmore, St Catherine, opened in September 2013 amid anger from parents, because the building was not finished. Five years later, the Jamaica Observer reported on August 23, 2018, the school’s first cohort to sit the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) had recorded a 100 per cent pass rate in nine subjects.

The school is a partnership between the Ministry of Education and the New Testament Church of God in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, which owns the land on which it sits. In September 2013 parents learned that 100 students would be taught in the hall of the church while others would use part of a basic school run by the church. At the time the school was being built at a cost of $600 million, and education officials said it would not be ready until the end of that year. At an emergency meeting in the church hall in June 2013, parent Sasha Smith asked officials, “Why does the experiment have to start with my child?” Principal Ottis Brown said 26 of the 99 students placed there that year were transferred out by their parents.

The results turned that around. All 100 students in the cohort earned grades one to three in subjects including English A, information technology, technical drawing and industrial technology-building, and the school recorded 77 per cent in mathematics. At sixth form, Cedar Grove recorded 100 per cent passes in all but five of the 19 CAPE subjects sat. Marketed as a School of Excellence with a science, technology, engineering and mathematics focus, it placed 34th of 103 schools islandwide in CAPE in 2016.

“It pleases me that we were able to work with them and get them to the point where they did this well,” Brown said. “Above all, we thank God, the Master Teacher, for His guidance over these past five years.”

Cedar Grove shows what church land can do when it is put to work. A denomination supplied the site and, in the early months, its own hall and basic school space, in partnership with the Ministry of Education. That kind of partnership turns church land into a public asset that serves a fast-growing community like Portmore, and a good school nearby is one of the things families weigh when they choose where to buy or rent. The rocky start is the other lesson: opening before a building is ready can cost a new institution its community’s trust, even if the results later win it back.