Immaculate Conception High tops Educate Jamaica's high school ranking

Immaculate Conception High, one of Jamaica’s most renowned all-girls public school in St Andrew, has outpaced all high schools nationally in ranking first in the 2023 Educate Jamaica High School Performance Index.

While schools from Kingston and St Andrew dominated the top 27 list, there was notably no place on the list for any high schools from St Thomas, Portland, St Mary and Hanover.

The rankings are calculated by local think tank, Educate Jamaica, using the percentage of each school’s total grade 11 cohort “that achieved five or more subjects”, including both mathematics and English Language, which students sat in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations.

“It must be noted that all subjects sat prior to grade 11 (in grades 7, 8, 9 and 10) were taken into account,” stated Educate Jamaica, whose somewhat controversial rankings are returning after a five-year hiatus.

At the end of the calculations, Immaculate Conception High had 98.8 per cent of its students passing five or more CSEC subjects.

Principal of the school, Stacey Reynolds, in reflecting on the school’s ranking in a newspaper supplement courtesy of Educate Jamaica, said during the COVID-19 pandemic, systems were implemented to ensure that all the students and teachers had a device and were online.

This was as a result of teamwork and constant communication with the Home and School Association (HSA) Executive and the New York Chapter of the Past Students’ Association, among other things, said Reynolds.

“The administration ensured that day-to-day activities were as normal as possible, and activities like general assembly, prize giving, parent/teacher consultation, form time/registration, HSA meetings, block meetings…, were (all) held as regularly scheduled on the timetable virtually,” she recounted.

“We faced a lot of issues, however, we must thank all the stakeholders for their commitment,” Reynolds stated.

Elsewhere on the Educate Jamaica ranking, co-educational school Campion High was a very close second behind Immaculate Conception, with the former receiving a score of 97.5 per cent.

St Andrew High School for Girls, which scored 93 per cent, was third, followed by Wolmer’s Girls’ School with 92.4 per cent, and St James-based Montego Bay High with 91 per cent.

Rounding out the top 10 are the co-educational Ardenne High School, Wolmer’s Boys’ School, the all-girls Westwood High School, Munro College, and Manning’s High School.

Interestingly, 12 all-female institutions were included in the top 27 performing schools, while six all-male schools made the list, four of which made the top 20.

Among the six all-boy schools making the top 27 list were Wolmer’s Boys’ School and Munro College (both in the top 10); St George’s College, which placed at number 17 with a 68 per cent score; Jamaica College at number 20 with 65.06 per cent; Kingston College at number 21 with 64.4 per cent; and Calabar High came in at number 25 with a score of 58 per cent.

A total of 14 schools from Kingston and St Andrew, six of which were in the top 10, dominated the rankings.

Shockingly, there were no schools from St Thomas, Portland, St Mary and Hanover which made the Educate Jamaica list dubbed the high school post-pandemic performance rating 2023.

“Schools that have unfortunately not been included were as a result of the schools achieving less than 50 per cent of their students meeting the criteria, or we were unable to verify the accuracy of their data,” said Educate Jamaica in a publication printed in the Jamaica Observer.

The think tank also said it does not use CSEC sittings in its calculations, “as sittings disincentivise schools from entering students for exams.”

Further, “using sittings as the basis for calculations reduces the focus on improving student performance,” Educate Jamaica suggested.

See the top 10 ranking below:

Immaculate Conception High (98.8%)

2023 ranking: 1

2018 ranking: 2

Campion College (97.5%)

2023 ranking: 2

2018 ranking: 1

St Andrew High School for Girls (93%)

2023 ranking: 3

2018 ranking: 3