Car­ol Quash

"You are not a beh-beh Third World cunumunu," is a say­ing that each stu­dent of the North Gate Col­lege in St Au­gus­tine can re­cite at the drop of a hat.

Ac­cord­ing to se­nior teacher at the col­lege Yolande La Pierre, one of the things the teach­ers of the in­sti­tute try to in­stil in their stu­dents was a sense of self worth.

The col­lege will cel­e­brate its tenth an­niver­sary lat­er this year and La Pierre said while the in­sti­tute placed great em­pha­sis on aca­d­e­mics, it was not just an aca­d­e­m­ic mill that churned out pass­es in sub­jects. She said al­though this was the claim of many aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions, there were two things that made North Gate Col­lege dis­tinct from the rest–the glob­al per­spec­tive it af­ford­ed its stu­dents and the fact that it was not a "pres­tige" school, de­spite the cal­i­bre of stu­dents on its en­rol­ment reg­is­ter.

"We have vis­i­tors to our school from all around the world. This gives our stu­dents the sense that the world is much small­er than they think... We in­sist that we are not a pres­tige school. Our pol­i­cy is that we must be able to bridge the gap be­tween dif­fer­ent class­es in so­ci­ety. God is a God of every­body," she said. "But we don't low­er our stan­dards," she quick­ly added. She said the school pro­vid­ed a safe en­vi­ron­ment for its stu­dents, en­cour­aged free­dom of ex­pres­sion, and taught the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing bound­aries.

Aca­d­e­mics Plus...

In ad­di­tion to its ex­cel­lent aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes, La Pierre said, stu­dents were ex­posed to sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, life skills pro­grammes, ca­reer days and lead­er­ship de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes. She said the col­lege al­so fo­cused on is­sues such as male em­pow­er­ment ini­tia­tives and work­shops for par­ents on skills for deal­ing with teenagers. "Aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, we have al­ways been sound and above av­er­age. We un­der­stand that all stu­dents don't have the same aca­d­e­m­ic abil­i­ties, but we in­sist that every stu­dent must leave with more than they had when they came in."

She ad­mit­ted with a chuck­le though, that the school's foot­ball team mem­bers were not so­ca war­riors in the mak­ing. "I have to say they have heart and spir­it. But the im­por­tant thing is that they en­joy them­selves." La Pierre said the an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion had a twofold pur­pose: "We will be cel­e­brat­ing the jour­ney and thank­ing those who have worked with us, and we will be in­tro­duc­ing our­selves to those who don't know us."