Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Con­cerns are be­ing raised about the cri­te­ria be­ing used to award the Pres­i­dent's Medal to stu­dents in T&T. This fol­lows the fail­ure to award 18-year-old San Fer­nan­do stu­dent Nicholas Sam­my with the Pres­i­dent's Medal de­spite that fact that he beat out thou­sands of stu­dents to achieve the over­all prize for the Most Out­stand­ing Can­di­date in the re­gion at the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE). For his ex­cel­lence, CAPE is re­ward­ing Sam­my with the Den­nis Irvine Award in Turks and Caicos on De­cem­ber 2. This has prompt­ed con­cerns about why Sam­my was not one of the re­cip­i­ents of the Pres­i­dent's Medal this year. Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands the mat­ter is cur­rent­ly be­ing re­viewed by the min­istry.

The young chap had his heart and eyes set on ded­i­cat­ing the medal to his late fa­ther Chu­ni­lal Sam­my, who died hours be­fore he wrote his Span­ish and Chem­istry ex­am­i­na­tions. Ac­cord­ing to ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials the cri­te­ria for the award is that stu­dents are re­quired to re­ceive a Grade I in eight units. Sam­my, how­ev­er, sur­passed the cri­te­ria but his dream is yet to be­come re­al­i­ty. The for­mer Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, stu­dent achieved Grade I and dis­tinc­tions in 14 CAPE units–Ap­plied Math­e­mat­ics Units 1 and 2, Bi­ol­o­gy Units 1 and 2, Caribbean Stud­ies, Chem­istry Units 1 and 2, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, Physics Units 1 and 2, Pure Math­e­mat­ics Units 1 and 2 and Span­ish Units 1 and 2.

Sun­day Guardian caught up with as­pir­ing en­gi­neer at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, on Fri­day where he is pur­su­ing his BSC in Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing. Ad­mit­ting to be­ing a bit dis­ap­point­ed, Sam­my said he, too, was con­fused over the se­lec­tion process of award­ing the medal, but still pleased that his ef­fort is be­ing recog­nised and is be­ing re­ward­ed. "I did not even know the Den­nis Irvine Award even ex­ist­ed. My eyes were set on the Pres­i­dent's Medal since I was in Form Four and through­out Form Six I was work­ing to­wards it. When I was not award­ed the medal, of course I felt dis­ap­point­ed but it makes no sense dwelling in the past."

Hold­ing back the tears from flow­ing, Sam­my said: "I was griev­ing but knew I had to make dad and my moth­er Pa­tri­cia proud. If I had re­ceived the medal it was go­ing to be ded­i­cat­ed to him. It was a very dif­fi­cult time for me but I was able to sur­vive. Even the day of his fu­ner­al I wrote two ex­am­i­na­tions and then went to the ser­vice. He was not there with me in body but in spir­it, and if I had re­ceived that medal it would have been for him." De­fy­ing the odds, Sam­my al­so ex­celled a step fur­ther and copped an open schol­ar­ship in the area of Math­e­mat­ics. He at­trib­uted the suc­cess to his teacher Haseena Ra­mas­ra who al­so passed away dur­ing his ex­am­i­na­tions.

Yes­ter­day, prin­ci­pal Er­rol Jaikarans­ingh ad­mit­ted that he, too, was un­cer­tain about the cri­te­ria used to award the Pres­i­dent's Medal. Jaikarans­ingh, how­ev­er, said he was proud of Sam­my's ac­com­plish­ments. At­tempts to clear the air on the sit­u­a­tion proved fu­tile yes­ter­day as the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Gopeesingh said he could not com­ment on the is­sue un­less he was briefed by ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials or the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary.