Colin De La Cruz, 46, headmaster of Waramuri Primary School, wants the Ministry of Education to gazette the ‘primary top’ or secondary department of Waramuri primary as a discrete secondary school based on the outstanding performance of its students at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations. “I begged and lobbied for a building to house the secondary department of the school. We managed to get that building and expanded on the CSEC subjects as I said. We have children passing all the subjects being offered. We worked to improve the school a great lot with the Department of Education (DoE), Region One and the Minis-try of Education’s (MoE) support.”
The school now offers 14 subjects at CSEC but to date the most a student has written is 11. In recent years, the headmaster extraordinaire told Stabroek Weekend that on his return to Waramuri Primary in 2016, he expanded on the five CSEC subjects that the former head teacher Rudolph Peters had introduced at the primary top to 11.
“I expanded on that project with advice from the ministry. We have produced good results from then to now. The first time we offered ten subjects, we had several children coming out with ten subjects to their names with grades one, two and three.”
From this year’s batch of 33 students who wrote CSEC, five students gained between seven and 11 subjects with Grades One I to III passes. At first glance the school has also recorded 100 per cent passes in a number of subjects including agricultural science (double award), human and social biology, and physical education and sport.
The top five students were Jesse Rodrigues, 11; Wayne Correia, 10; Romelo Abrams, 9; Marona Williams, 8 and Azim Abrams 7. According to De La Cruz, Marona Williams left the Primary Top of Manawarin Primary School to study at Waramuri Primary School (WPS) and Wayne Correia left Santa Rosa Secondary School (SRSS) to study for his CSEC at WPS. It should be noted that students from Waramuri Primary use SRSS as their centre to write their CSEC exams and their results are extracted when the results are out.
“In 2018 we had one of the best performances at CSEC. That was when we topped the Moruca sub-region in passes and matriculation rate. We had a matriculation rate of 55 per cent. The school produced seven of the ten top students in the Moruca sub-region, each having passed ten subjects – including double awards for agriculture – with grades one to three.
The students were also among the top batch in Region One. With the exception of two secondary-trained agricultural science teachers, the students were taught mainly by primary-trained teachers. “From then to now we continued to produce students with good results. The last batch we sent was in 2020. We had a student from Manawarin who did his secondary schooling at Waramuri who gained nine subjects.”
CSEC subjects offered at the school are Mathematics, English, Social Studies, Science and Agricultural Science (single and double awards), Principles of Business, Office Administration, Human and Social Biology, Electronic Documentation Preparation and Management, Physical Education, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. As a primary top, the school gets assistance in its secondary programme from Santa Rosa Secondary from time to time, De La Cruz said.
Background
The fifth of seven children, De La Cruz comes from Mora, Santa Rosa Village, Moruca. He gained his early education at Santa Rosa Primary and Santa Rosa Secondary schools.
“I am among the first batch of 15 students to graduate from SRSS along with Indigenous Peoples activist and broadcaster Graham Atkinson and former chief medex of the Ministry of Health, the late Lolita Rebeiro. Being in the pioneering batch, he said, has helped him to manage Waramuri primary top to rival his alma mater.
De La Cruz wanted to join the Medex programme and after graduating from secondary school he was employed by the Vector Control Unit of the Ministry of Health in the malaria control programme and was stationed at the Kumaka District Hospital.
Not satisfied with his working conditions, he left and started teaching at WPS in 1996 uncertain about his future in the teaching profession.
“I taught for one year and then enrolled at the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE) where I did the primary programme. In 1997, shortly after admission I was ill with malaria and took a year’s leave of absence. I returned to CPCE in 1998 to complete my training.” He graduated in 2000 and returned to WPS to continue his teaching career.
He did not go on to the University of Guyana (UG) due to family commitments but is at present pursuing a bachelors’ degree in education online via the University of the Southern Caribbean in Trinidad and Tobago.
“I completed my first year and submitted some of my assignments to meet the deadline when I was very, very ill with COVID-19. I was surprised to see my results for the first year. My GPA stands at 3.62. I am about to start my second year. I am studying at home using my own Digicel internet service and apart from being expensive, it is slow and it could be frustrating.”
A former tutor on the CPCE Distance Teachers’ Training Programme from the inception, De La Cruz tutored in curriculum development for over a decade.
The father of three children, two girls and one boy, De La Cruz is the husband of Sharmayne, of Waramuri, who he married in 2002.
He taught for nine years at WPS and on the 1st September, 2009, he was appointed a senior master for St Nicholas Primary School (SNPS) at Manawarin. He spent five years at SNPS during which time he was appointed a Grade C headmaster.
In 2014, he was transferred to Waramuri Primary where he has been the headmaster for the past eight years.
St Nicholas Primary
On arrival at SNPS, De La Cruz said, he found a “gross shortage of furniture, shortage of textbooks and generally all types of learning and teaching materials. There were staff vacancies. I worked along with the DoE and the MoE to put things in place to improve the working and learning environment at the school. We got new desks and benches and blackboards and the school building was renovated. During my time, we introduced the school feeding programme at SNPS. We operated a chicken farm at the school to cater for the school feeding programme and with these improvements, the attendance of children improved and their school work improved.”
He continued. “For the first time in the history of the school, it was fully staffed. We improved the results at the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA). During my time we had the highest performance at the NGSA, with pupils passing for Santa Rosa Secondary and Charity Secondary schools. When I first went there, the school would get about zero or one pass for a secondary school and the children remained in the primary top/secondary department of the school. That was the trend throughout the years. In 2014, when I left we had 14 passes for secondary schools and that [had] never happened before.”
During his tenure, pupils from the school took part in the district and regional science fairs and made their way to the National Science Fair. “I don’t think they have reached that level again.”
While at St Nicholas Primary, the school was upgraded from a Grade C to a Grade B school as enrollment had reached some 500 pupils. “The enrollment is much more than that of Waramuri.”
Also while at Manawarin, De La Cruz worked with the community and lobbied to get a building to house the nursery children. Subsequently, the nursery department was gazetted as St Nicholas Nursery School at the Grade C level.
Waramuri Primary
With the upgrade of Manawarin to a Grade B school De La Cruz was transferred to Waramuri Primary, where a vacancy existed for a Grade C head teacher. “I started to work hard, of course.”
In 2016 after he returned to Waramuri, De La Cruz said, “We had a very good performance at the Grade Nine National Assessment. Five of our students emerged among the top ten in the Moruca sub region.”
At present, he said, all the teachers in the primary section of the school are 100 per cent trained. Recently the school was equipped with six large-screen televisions installed so that visual learning by video can take place. “We have a solar system that powers the school. Both buildings of the primary school are wired and we have lighting systems attached to the grid so we have electricity. This was done with the support of the MoE and the Regional Democratic Council of Region One.”
With the support of the Waramuri Village Council and the Department of Education, the school obtained four school boats which transport children from the Haimaracabra area and a section of Manawarin to Waramuri Primary.
The school has an enrollment of 172 in the primary section and 206 in the primary top with ten teachers assigned to the primary and 11 to the secondary department. The students in the secondary department are taught mainly by primary trained teachers.
De La Cruz himself teaches social studies to the CSEC class in the secondary department and also assists in teaching the NGSA class apart from carrying out his administrative duties
Apart from academics, the school takes part in a lot of sporting and extracurricular activities. Annalisa Vincent, national female footballer, was a former student of WPS who started her football career at Waramuri. She is the first Indigenous student to land an athletic scholarship at an American university. Ricky Williams, Leah Harris, Clezin Joseph and Jada la Cruz, all distance runners and graduates of WPS, have also made marks on the national scene. Other outstanding athletic students included national cricketers Nicko and Bruce Vincent. Bruce recently represented Guyana in the national Under-17 and Under-19 teams.
“We produced a lot of good runners and footballers. In 2018, we had the regional football competition and we beat all the big teams like North West Secondary, Port Kaituma Secondary and Santa Rosa Secondary in the region and we were crowned the regional champion. We played unbeaten. A regional competition has not been held since.”
Asked where some of his past students are now, De La Cruz said, “We have several of them in the teaching profession. One is on the medex training programme and some are health workers. Some are at UG, or, at the Essequibo Technical Institute. His eldest daughter is in her final year pursuing a bachelor’s degree at UG.
“We could not have achieved this on our own. We try to build and maintain a good relationship with the community.
That was one of my main advantages at St Nicholas Primary. I had big parents support there. We have the same support at Waramuri. We do a lot of fundraisers.”
Staging pageants is one means by which the school raises funds. “We stage the Miss Mashramani and Miss Independence pageants. Miss Amerindian Heritage pageant is coming up soon and we will get a lot of support. While we do that we lay the foundation for students to take part in other pageants. Leah Nelson, Miss Waramuri, just won the Miss Moruca pageant two Saturdays gone. She was one of the girls who took part in pageants at our primary school here. So our extra curricular activities tend to pay off.” The school has debating, football and hardball cricket clubs among others.
“We have the children engaged in all of these activities apart from school work to help to make the school life more interesting and to give them some confidence and experience when going out into the wider world.”
