The Grateful Hill Primary and Infant School are situated on the Glengoffe Main Road overlooking the historic Glengoffe Market and the Rio Pedro River. The community lies on the North-Eastern tip of St. Catherine – 13.662 km North of Kingston, 15.525 km North-East of Spanish Town and is bounded on the East of South-Eastern St. Mary and South by rural St. Andrew.

 

It is a high elevation and experienced regular rainfall, arable soil type and cool temperatures make it naturally ideal for agriculture. In former times when domestic and export was ‘king’, the community was a ‘top producer’ in banana, cola, cocoa, yam, ginger, nutmeg, sugar cane and vegetables, it earned the name ‘The Food Basket of Kingston’.

 

The school, which started in 1870 as a small Methodist Church School, was later amalgamated with the Mizpah Baptist School and became the Grateful Hill Elementary School under the earlier pastoral leadership of the Reverend Mr Sherlock a Methodist Minister, and father of Phillip and Hugh Sherlock, scholars of national and international repute. The school was housed under the cellar of the Grateful Hill Methodist Church termed, ‘The Dark Hole of Calcutta’. After much representation, petition and demonstration from the community, the Department of Education of 1938 erected the Grateful Hill Government School at the present site. Two (2) barrack-type wooden buildings constructed to accommodate three hundred students (300).