First Published as Chapter 5 titled: Church, State and Secondary Education in Jamaica: 1912-1943. (1988). In Perspectives in the History of Caribbean Education. Editor Ruby Hope King, Faculty of Education University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, Pp 109-144.

Public Secondary Education in Jamaica was established between 1879 and 1911 with Trust Schools under the management of the Jamaica Schools Commission. Church, State and Secondary Education in Jamaica gives a description of the formative years and reports the findings and recommendations of the Piggott Report of 1911 which evaluated the formative years.

This chapter filled a gap in original research on Secondary Education in Jamaica between 1912 and 1943. Dr. Ruby King had done the pioneering study on the establishment of public secondary education in Jamaica in the period 1879 - 1911. This Chapter documents the developments in public secondary education between the Piggott evaluation of secondary education in Jamaica in 1911 and the Kandel Report of 1943.

The contents cover the new definition of secondary education enunciated in Law 34 of 1914, the Impact of World War 1 and the new framework for public secondary education of 1920. It also covers the changes in public secondary education which took place between 1912 and 1943 in governance; the inclusion of church schools in the public system; the grand-in-aid scheme; expansion of girls’ education; staffing of schools; qualifications of teachers; pension for teachers; unemployment of secondary school leavers in the 1930 and the social relations of secondary education.

Included also is a list of public secondary schools and their owners; the gender and location of public high schools; annual data on enrolment; annual income and per capita costs; the Cambridge Examination results of 1943 and the number of scholarships given to attend public high school and to attend universities in Britain in 1943. There is a brief discussion on the change in the ownership of private secondary schools over the period and a brief references to interschool sports.