Queen’s College is the Highest Secondary learning institution in Guyana. It is situated at the south-easterly junction of Camp Street and Thomas Lands. Students can enter the school through the National Grade Six Assessment(NGSA), and at the Lower 6th Form Level on the basis of Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate(CSEC) performance.
Origin of Queens College
Queen’s College (originally Queen’s College Grammar School for Boys) was founded in 1844 by Reverend William Piercy Austin, D.D., Bishop of the Anglican diocese of then British Guiana. The Bishops’ High School was the female equivalent..
The initial assembly was held on 5 August 1844 with an enrollment of fifteen boys. Although the school started out as an Anglican church School, Bishop Austin was interested in making it more diversed to include non-Anglicans. The initial administration, however, consisted only of members of the Church of England.
Formal classes commenced on 15 August 1844 in the Old Colony House (situated in the compound of what is now the Guyana High Courts, previously known as the Victoria Law Courts). The original fifteen students had two tutors, with Bishop Austin himself becoming the first Principal. In 1845 the school moved to Main and Quamina (then Murray) Streets. Its population was rapidly expanding and, with a student body of seventy and three tutors, another move was made in 1854 to its first formal building at Carmichael and Quamina Streets.
The school was renamed Queen’s College in 1876,where it became a colonial institution. Several additional changes in location took the school to the site of the present Ministry of Health building (Vlissengen Road and Brickdam) in 1918, and then to its present location in Thomas Lands (Camp and Thomas Roads), where the facilities were formally opened on 3 December 1951. Furthermore, the school became co-educational in 1975. This was accomplished by transferring approximately one hundred and fifty girls into the 2nd, 3rd, Upper 5th and Lower 6th forms from the Bishops’ High School, which institution was also a single-sex institution. Girls were also admitted into the first form.
The building there maintained its original form until November 1997, when an arsonist struck and the entire middle section of the school – comprising the offices, auditorium, tuck shop and bicycle shed – was destroyed. Phase I of the rebuilding – the Administrative Block and Auditorium – has been completed and was dedicated on September 19, 2003. Queen’s College celebrated its 160th birthday on August 5, 2004.
School Houses
The school’s traditions include features that are characteristic of an English public school with a head boy, a head girl and prefects. Students are placed in groups called “houses” with a house master or house mistress, who is teacher, and head-of-house who was a student. The school’s ten houses are named after past Headmasters and masters (teachers), members of the school, members of the British Guiana colonial government, and historical figures significant to the former British Guiana. The ten houses have their own colours. The houses are as follow:
- A House – Percival (red)
- B House – Raleigh (royal blue)
- C House – Austin (emerald green)
- D House – D’Urban (brown)
- E House – Pilgrim (purple)
- F House – Weston (light blue)
- G House – Moulder (pink)
- H House – Wooley (dark green)
- K House – Cunningham (yellow)
- L House – Nobbs (white; presently gold)
Queens college alumni
The mission of the Queen’s College alumni to a broad extent is “to further the interests of the Queen’s College of Guyana, with a view to ensuring its continued high level of contribution to education in Guyana.”
Specifically, the stated purposes of the Association are:
- To help assure the stability of Queen’s College which contributes to academic excellence in Guyana.
- To provide financial and other forms of material assistance to Queen’s College of Guyana.
- To associate with any non-profit organization involved in assisting Guyanese in Guyana and elsewhere.
- To formally associate with any other Queen’s College Old Students’ Association or any successor organizations.
Our mission, therefore, recognizes and supports the school’s motto: “Fideles Ubique Utiles” (translation: “Loyal and Useful Everywhere”).
An all boys school
The following is believed by Dennis A. Nichols
For several decades, Queen’s College’s high academic tradition has, almost imperiously, straddled and throttled those of other institutions of secondary education in Guyana.
However, for prestige, pre-eminence and sheer pride of place, this ‘queen’ of colleges is king, and in the 1960’s before it turned co-ed, its boys were princes of lofty esteem and scholastic excellence. But princes are not always the good little charmers some make them out to be; some are not so little and not so good, and one of the truest adages over time has been the one that asserts ‘Boys will be boys!’
A look at the names of QC alumni, including some of contemporaries and class mates of Nichols between 1963 and 1968, reveal a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of Guyanese distinction. Names such as Harry Annamunthodo, Forbes Burnham, Cheddi Jagan, Charles Denbow, Shridath Ramphal, Terry Holder, Roger Luncheon, Laurence Clarke, Deryck Bernard, David Granger, all men of acclaimed pedigree, jump out at him immediately. In the earlier days the school was considered by many as the premier boys’ school not only in Guyana, but throughout the Caribbean.
Article References
- http://qcguyanaalumny.org/mission/
- https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2014/04/27/queens-college-a-pre-eminent-boys-will-be-boys-school-fraternity-in-the-1960s/
- http://www.qcguyanaalumny.org/About_Us/brief_history.html
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