By Fernando Davis

For years, and much to the chagrin of school officials, the name Marcus Garvey Technical High School, St. Ann’s Bay, was well known nationally…but for all the wrong reasons.

The school, even though boasting the name of one of Jamaica’s most fabled National Heroes and also one of the all-time great civil rights advocates, was synonymous with violence, ‘irredeemable students’ and non-achievers.

The reputation, whether real or imagined, was such that in 2011, then education minister and current prime minister Andrew Holness named Marcus Garvey among four schools that were targeted for intervention by the Ministry of Education.

Enter Principal Anniona Jones!

Now, nearly two years in the post and with whatever honeymoon period – if she ever had one – long gone, not only has Jones stamped her mark as a no-nonsense leader with very little patience for failure and excuses, but she has also remarkably got the entire staff and student faculty to buy into the idea that Marcus Garvey is potentially as good as any other high school in St. Ann, if not Jamaica.

“When I got here and saw the rich talent pool we have at our disposal, I promptly declared the dawn of a new day at the institution and set about making it more reflective of the national hero in whose honour it is named,” she noted.

She added that her job from the get go has always been about the rebranding of the school, adding that along the way the educational focus has expanded to include entrepreneurship and skills training.

Jones further noted that, traditionally, Marcus Garvey is a school that receives students who are performing below average and in all probability would have had a hard time finding places in some of the other high schools in the parish.

“It was viewed by residents in the community as a troubled institution, where indiscipline prevails and examination passes fall below expectations,” she added.

“That was the reality… that was the mindset and that was what we were up against. I told our teachers that we would not accept that stigma as a given and that we would work hard and dedicate ourselves into changing that narrative about Marcus Garvey and, for the most part, I think we have succeeded,” she further added.

Jones said a huge part of the buy-in was to show the students that they were the beneficiary of an important legacy where they are a part of an institution that bears the name of the Right Excellent Marcus Mosiah Garvey, one of the greatest minds of the 20th Century.

It was against that background that the school recruited specifically persons who would readily buy into that kind of mindset… who would believe in the philosophy of Marcus Garvey and also who would believe in “black excellence”.

She added that the next step was to unleash their creative spirits, teaching them that a part of “our school” is to focus on not just skills development as a technical high school, but also “black wealth, generating wealth”.

“So as it stands today, entrepreneurship as well as skills training is a main part of our focus where some of the older kids are enrolled in disciplines such as Hospitality Management where they earn associate degrees,.” she said.

“We have two associate degree programmes that we started with the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean. We also have the Centre of Occupational Studies partnering with us for that programme,” said Jones.

Going forward, Jones said the school would only get better and will be a force to be reckoned with in terms of academic excellence and sports.

“We believe that as a technical institution it doesn’t matter where our students are coming from. We fully well know the story so we are not complaining, we are not arguing. We know we have children that come in, on average, reading at about grade four, with a math age of about grade three and we are not arguing about it. All we’re saying is, we plan to take these children toward their purpose using skills development and shifting mindset. We know we’re starting with a handicap, but once we understand where we’re coming from and we firmly set our eyes on where our kids can go, the staff that I have are qualified and trained, and they can get the kids there.”

Jones said the school’s Mansfield, Ocho Rios campus, which accommodates new students, will be used as an incubator to address student-deficits and get them ready for high school academical life more.

“So we’re not going to quit on them, once they don’t quit on us,” she quipped.

Marcus Garvey Technical, formerly St Ann’s Bay Junior Secondary, was first established in September 1971, with 14 teachers, and 780 students, enrolling from grades seven to nine.

Today the school population is comprised of 119 teachers and 1,764 students, spread across two campuse – the Mansfield campus in Ocho Rios for grades seven and eight students, and the main campus in St Ann’s Bay, the original site, for grades nine to 11.