Berkeley Institute will be closed to new students for two years, starting in 1997, Education Minister the Hon. Clarence Terceira said yesterday.

The halt to admission of new students will coincide with a $13-million to $14-million building project at Berkeley, slated to be one of the Island's two public senior secondary schools.

It will also coincide with the opening of a new $40-million senior secondary school at Prospect.

Dr. Terceira denied that the closure of Berkeley to new students is designed to force students into the new school, which critics have described as "a mega-school''.

He noted that students entering the senior school in 1997 would be transitional students in the restructuring process, since they would not have gone through the Island's new middle schools.

"With so much construction having to go on at Berkeley, we don't want to have that many students there,'' he said.

The Berkeley construction project -- final plans for which were recently drawn up by an architect and school officials -- would provide for crafts and technology to be taught there as well as at Prospect, he said.

But Berkeley would not be as big a school as Prospect or offer as wide a range of courses, he said. Berkeley would cater to about 650 students, while Prospect would accommodate about 850 initially, and gradually grow to take in about 1,250.

Students returned to schools yesterday after the Christmas break.

This year, work on the new senior secondary school at Prospect would be the most visible aspect of the school restructuring, which eliminates secondary school entrance exams, moves Bermuda's public schools away from a selective admission system, and adds one year of schooling.

A site preparation and demolition contract worth close to $500,000 has just been awarded to Island Construction and Landscaping Services, which moved onto the site on the weekend.

Works and Engineering Minister the Hon. Leonard Gibbons said the contract would be the first of about 60 or 70 awarded by the project manager, Somers Construction Ltd.

Dr. Terceira said he hoped to name an interim board for the Prospect school within two months.

It might require special legislation, in addition to a new Education Act which he still hoped to bring to Parliament this year, he said.

Renovations to Bermuda schools slated to become middle schools will occur in 1996, Dr. Terceira said.

Work behind the scenes would continue on a new curriculum, he said. Senior Education Officer Dr. Joseph Christopher and American consultant Dr. Helen Stemler were working on the curriculum with more than 100 volunteers from the community.

And interviews were continuing with teachers to determine who would teach at the middle and senior secondary schools.