Plans to convert Berkeley Institute into a senior secondary school have fallen six months behind schedule.

Board of Governors chairman Calvin White yesterday told The Royal Gazette the board hoped to have final drawings of the design plans completed by now.

But he said board members had not yet seen the final drawings.

"We are easily six months behind,'' Mr. White said. "I don't know whether that can be made up. We have a commitment from Government that the school will open on time, but we may not have everything completed.

"It may be there will still be some construction going on in 1999.'' Berkeley is slated to become the Island's second senior secondary school in September, 1999.

The first senior secondary school is scheduled to open at Prospect in September, next year.

Government originally planned to turn Berkeley into one of five middle schools and send all public school students between the ages of 14 and 18 to the school at Prospect.

But public outcry and protests from Berkeley's board and alumni forced Government to change its plans.

Education Minister Jerome Dill promised to review the senior level plans when he took over the Education portfolio late last year.

In May, Mr. Dill announced that Government was sticking with its plans for two senior secondary schools, but the school at Prospect will have a maximum of 950 students while Berkeley will be able to take in no more than 750 students.

Noting that Berkeley's design plans were put on hold until the announcement, Mr. White said: "Now that that has been decided we are working on the footprint, including the size of the property we need.

"We also have to decide if we need to purchase other properties northward, depending on the design of the school. For example, will there be a separate auditorium? "Right now we are behind as far as the timetabling goes.'' While admitting that there had been some delays, Mr. Dill said yesterday that he saw no reason why the school could not open as a senior secondary school on time.

"There was some slippage, (but) slippage in any of these large projects is going to happen,'' he said. "But we're just going to have to try to make up in different areas.

"For example we had X-number of months for design briefs, X-number of months for consultation, and X-number of months to put it out to tender. It may be possible to streamline one of these stages, perhaps tendering.'' With a larger student population anticipated, Mr. Dill said it was important to have Berkeley functional.

"If we have the heart of the campus up and running, then they can work on the buildings with the students there,'' he added.

He also noted construction work was already planned at Berkeley while students were at the school.

"It is workable,'' Mr. Dill stressed. "We are committed to Berkeley. We are committed to it as an integral part of the school system, and we should have it finished on time or maybe ahead of time.

"The good news is that we've managed to identify the slippage in time.'' Works Minister Leonard Gibbons said: "We are progressing as fast as we could.

There was some delay caused by the decision to be made on the size of the school. But I know there has been some progress.''