TARRANT High School has a checkered past, but with the success of its sixth-form programme last year the institution appears on course to a promising future.

For the first time, in 2011, the school — which has only had a sixth-form programme in place for five years — experienced 100 per cent passes in four of the seven Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) subjects it offers — communication studies, food and nutrition, management of business as well as art and design.

At the same time, Tarrant received a 98 per cent pass rate in sociology, 87 per cent in Caribbean studies, and 64 per cent in information technology.

Principal Garfield Higgins — who daily shares his mantra “it is cool to be bright” with students — said the passes are even more significant because 98 per cent of the 71 students who sat the examination are ‘native’ Tarrant High students, that is, students who would have come in with very low Grade Six Achievement Test scores.

“The fact that we can get them to matriculate to sixth form, and they have to matriculate with five CSECs [Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate subjects], and after two years to be getting 100 per cent [passes in four] of the seven areas that we now offer at sixth form, is pretty good,” he told Career & Education.

Tarrant High, located in a tough inner-city community off Molynes Road in Kingston, is a school which has over the years grappled with not only academic underperformance, but also violence. A police search of the school in 2008, for example, turned up several weapons; including an illegal firearm, 34 pairs of scissors, five knives, ice picks, razors, blades, pieces of glass, screwdrivers, a bottle containing acid, and marijuana.

However, Higgins — who has headed the institution since last September — has insisted these are things of the past.

“We are, by and large, over them, and we are focusing on the development of the school going forward. I am not going to say to you that we will never have challenges similar to what we would’ve had in the past, but I am saying we are taking a different direction in terms of making excellence a premium at the school,” he said.

Higgins said that as a result of the good CAPE passes, they will be expanding the sixth-form programme for the upcoming school year to offer 17 CAPE subjects.

“So we will be offering law, accounting, economics and others, to attract a greater cross section of students from other schools. For example, the students [who] can’t get into sixth form at their schools, we want to say to them, ‘come to Tarrant, we have a quality sixth-form programme’,” he told Career & Education.

According to Higgins, they have already created a brochure, and beginning this month will market their offerings to high schools which do not have sixth forms and students who would like to have options.

Further, he said he is aiming to improve the quality of the passes to make it comparable to other schools. He noted that his vision is to transform the school into an institution of first choice for both parents and students over the next decade.

“In ten years, my objective is to have your perception so altered that you will choose Tarrant as your first choice. And how do we achieve this? By increasing the output of the quality of passes that we get at the school,” Higgins said.

He added that he was not in the “business of bellyaching” that they do not get the best students.

“We don’t get the best students, so what? We have to do with what we get, and we can’t sit down and twiddle our thumbs and not do what we need to do, which is to educate people’s children. I am firm on that,” Higgins said.

Meanwhile, Higgins has readily admitted that they have their work cut out for them to improve the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination passes of students from the lower school, particularly in mathematics. Their passes in that subject currently stand at 21 per cent.

“I am very concerned about that, and we are now doing a rescue plan to bring the mathematics department up to speed,” he said.

Higgins said is considering, as part of that strategy, the retraining of teachers, where necessary, to have a different perspective on the teaching of mathematics.

He noted that in his development plan, he envisions that by 2017, every student who graduates from Tarrant High must graduate with at least four CSEC, City and Guilds or NCTVET subjects, inclusive of English and a numerical subject.

“Critical to that is having every student believe that it’s cool to be bright, and every teacher believe that ‘I am an intellectual and I am here to impart knowledge and to socially develop students to ensure they matriculate to sixth form or to college or out into the working world prepared to face that other level of development’,” Higgins told Career & Education.

He added that the school of 1,400 students faces a challenge of limited resources and is working with the Ministry of Education to get all that they need in order to succeed. Among other things, Higgins said that Tarrant High is in need of a new block of classrooms to accommodate grade 11 students, as well as the expansion of their sixth-form programme. Improvement in staff facilities is also on their wish list.