East End. Previously Government had intended for St. George's Secondary to be the middle school.

But yesterday the Minister for Education, the Hon. Clarence Terceira said that to turn St. George's Secondary into the middle school would cost about $5 million as opposed to spending an estimated $1 million on Chaffee.

Dr. Terceira said: "When I first heard about the intended Base closure I went down there like a shot. I met with the Commanding Officer, and we toured the premises.

"Recent indications say that it will require about $5 million to turn the St.

George's Secondary School into an adequate middle school. Chaffee is the ideal size for a middle school, and if we had to spend a million dollars, it would be ideal. The only major problem is that it does not have an adequate playground, but Chaffee has definitely been earmarked for us.'' The US Base will close next year.

Dr. Terceira also said the present pre-school structure will remain unchanged.

The Island's 18 primary schools will remain as they are, with the exception of Dellwood school, which will become a middle school.

The secondary school structure will change radically, with four of the current ones: Warwick, Sandy's, St. George's (or Chaffee), and Whitney becoming middle schools.

Berkeley Institute will become a senior school and a new one is due to be built at a site in Prospect.

The primary schools will be zoned according to location, which will decide which of the five middle school sites new entrants will attend.

Parents will have the option to decide which senior school their children will attend, but the Minister said: "If there is an imbalance in those who want to go to Berkeley or Prospect, it will have to be sorted out.'' While this restructuring is going on, the most important factor in the Minister's mind is the curriculum.

"We cannot continue teaching in the same way that we have been doing,'' he said. "No longer will you have the teacher just standing up in front of a class for an hour, and then moving on to another subject. It is going to be mostly `hands on', and it has been discovered that the more the student is involved the more they learn.''