WHO ARE WE?

Early Beginnings

The school was founded by the late Audrey V. Salmon. It began as an evening language institute in 1978 offering help with Spanish for students struggling with the language in the public school system. Mrs. Salmon, a trained Spanish teacher, had worked for nearly twenty years in the public education system. She recognized the challenges students in the system faced and developed a curriculum which helped them gain distinctions in high school external examinations. The language institute grew to include evening classes in French, German, English and Mathematics. Additionally there were conversational classes in Spanish and French for adults.

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Preparatory School and Kindergarten

In 1983, Mrs. Salmon established El Instituto de Mandevilla with 13 students. The school has grown quite significantly since then and currently boasts a population of almost 500 students. Our school population includes children  from 2 years and 8 months to 12 years old.

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Over the years the school has performed exceptionally in external examinations such as the Common Entrance and the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) which replaced the Common Entrance. To date there have been a number of Government scholarship winners who have been recognised for their outstanding performance in both the Common Entrance and the GSAT examinations. El Instituto students’ extraordinary performance has also been recognised by Corporate Jamaica. Students have received scholarships from entities such as banks  and insurance companies as a result of their performance in external examinations. The school’s GSAT scores consistently top the national average. In addition, based on GSAT results, the the school has been named  by the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper as “Top School” in the Ministry of Education’s Region 5.

The school’s involvement in co-curricular activities has earned it various trophies and medals and also provide the practical experiences to augment theoretical academic programmes.