# Wesley High School Founded (1882)

URL: https://allhistories.com/belize/timeline/1882-wesley-high-school-founded
Location: Belize City, Belize District
Themes: main-event

Education in nineteenth-century British Honduras was almost entirely in the hands of the churches. Methodist missionaries had worked in the settlement since the 1820s and built up a large Creole congregation and a network of elementary schools, but there was no institution offering secondary education, and the few families who could afford it sent their sons abroad to Jamaica, Britain or the United States. In June 1882 the Methodist Church inaugurated Wesley High School, the first secondary school in the colony. It opened with just five boys under the Reverend T. N. Roberts in a building at the corner of Albert and South Streets in Belize Town, moved to Regent and Prince Streets and, around 1889, to its present site on Yarborough Road. The school struggled financially and was closed for about twelve years between 1896 and 1909, and in 1925 it still had only 26 pupils. Wesley High School, later Wesley College, was followed by the Catholic St John's College in 1887 and by other church secondary schools, laying the foundations of the denominational education system that produced the colony's teachers, civil servants and, eventually, its nationalist politicians. Girls were first admitted in 1950. At this point in the timeline (June 1882), the Queen of the United Kingdom (Empress of India from 1876) was Victoria (20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901); the Lieutenant Governor of British Honduras was Frederick Palgrave Barlee (1877–1883).

## Why it matters
Wesley marked the beginning of secondary education in Belize, creating the institutions that trained the Creole professional class of the twentieth century.

Ruler at the Time: [Victoria](https://allhistories.com/belize/rulers/victoria)

Lieutenant Governor of British Honduras: Frederick Palgrave Barlee

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Wesley College (Belize)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_College_(Belize))
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Methodism Caribbean](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Methodism+Caribbean)
- [Wikipedia — Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodist_Church_in_the_Caribbean_and_the_Americas)
- [Wikipedia — British Honduras (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Honduras)