Lorenzo Gorvie Memorial Secondary School was known as the Rural Training and Commercial Institute with its Motto: Duces ut vivas. The school started as a Workers Training Centre for school dropouts along Parsonage Street, Waterloo, in 1971. Later the centre moved to Old Motor Road, Waterloo, between 1972 and 1973. Still moving from pillar to post as it were, the enterprising Lorenzo Milton Gorvie for whom the school has now been named leased disused railway buildings which became the nucleus of buildings on the present site of the school
The founder and proprietor of this institution officially established the school on 1st November 1974. The rational behind the establishment of the institute was to provide an exceptional opportunity at this relatively early stage for the alarming growing number of dropouts to be enrolled back into the school system in order to ensure continuity of the formal education. Starting on the personal initiative of the founder at a private residence along Parsonage Street, it was later relocated on the Main Motor Road, Post Office, Waterloo. Gradually, the school grew in importance and assumed Government recognition with the steady recruitment of trained and qualified teachers including expatriate Indians. As a result of this steady growth in trained and qualified teachers, infrastructural facilities and student population, the school became Government assisted. Meanwhile he also sought assistance from the United Methodist Church of which he himself was a member. This help was granted under the aegis of the then Resident Bishop, T.S. Bangura who took the R.T.C.I. on board thus benefiting from the assisted school status with U.M.C. helping to pay its rent. The school buildings are located permanently along the Freetown Waterloo highway in constricted surroundings. The school is at present a Junior Secondary School, but in 2008 the school started an SSS class that has got government recognition. It has thirteen (13) classroom spaces comprising a library and staff room in the railway building. Four (4) other classrooms were put up by Plan International under the Principalship of the late Albert Pamagbi. The other two (2) additional classrooms were put up by the school itself through the effort of the C.T.A. and school charges under the leadership of Mr. In 2010 Government handed over to the school three (3) classrooms, an office, toilet and water well through the Sababu Project under the current leadership of Mr. James A. Dawodu. A great bugbear in this scenario of space for further expansion is the ugly fact that the Sierra Leone Roads Authority (SLRA) has erected ownership beacons within the school compound meaning that the portions of land from the highway to the beacons could be demolished at any time the SLRA commences its road expansion work. This is an S.O.S profile.
