Suc­cess­ful SEA stu­dents from Ma­yaro, who will en­ter sec­ondary school at the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year, have pledged to "take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty" for their fu­ture. This pledge was made at the 2001 an­nu­al SEA awards func­tion host­ed by the Ma­yaro Past Pupils' As­so­ci­a­tion (MP­PA) at the bpTT Ma­yaro Re­source Cen­tre last month."We re­al­ly stud­ied hard for our re­sults. We have to thank our teach­ers and par­ents for their sup­port all these years. We are al­so grate­ful for the ef­forts by the as­so­ci­a­tion to ho­n­our us. "We are en­ter­ing a new phase in our lives and we in­tend to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our fu­ture," said Ri­car­da Ma­haraj, of Mafek­ing Gov­ern­ment, who placed first among Ma­yaro SEA stu­dents and passed for St Stephen's Col­lege in Princes Town.

Her sen­ti­ments were echoed by Adam Fran­cois, of Guayagua­yare RC, and Keenan Cyrus, of Ma­yaro Gov­ern­ment, who placed sec­ond and third, re­spec­tive­ly. The top 20 Ma­yaro SEA stu­dents were giv­en cash awards and cer­tifi­cates of ap­pre­ci­a­tion.Sel­wyn McK­night, schools su­per­vi­sor 1, South East­ern Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict (SEED), Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, told the packed au­di­ence of stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents, that the per­for­mance of pri­ma­ry schools in the Ma­yaro dis­trict was among the low­est in the coun­try.

Of the 51 pri­ma­ry schools in the SEED dis­trict, the high­est-ranked Ma­yaro school oc­cu­pied sixth po­si­tion, while the low­est was 47th. The rank­ings were done ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry's aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance in­dex.How­ev­er, McK­night paint­ed a pos­i­tive pic­ture for the fu­ture, dis­clos­ing that schools in the SEED re­gion have reg­is­tered an im­prove­ment per­for­mance of 72 per cent since 2009, the high­est for the pe­ri­od in the coun­try. He said the Min­istry was de­mand­ing greater val­ue for the mon­ey it was putting in­to ed­u­ca­tion.

Spe­cial guests at the func­tion were the top three stu­dents in this year's SEA ex­am­i­na­tions, who of­fered words of ad­vice and sup­port to the Ma­yaro stu­dents. Hail­ing from Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Gabrielle Bal­go­b­in, Adi­lah Adams and Rai Rooplal, were pre­sent­ed with awards of ex­cel­lence.Fea­ture speak­er at the func­tion was Avion Crooks, a pri­ma­ry school teacher and ed­i­tor of Ba­sia mag­a­zine, who urged the suc­cess­ful stu­dents to "take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what you are go­ing to be."Oliv­er Alexan­der, MP­PA pres­i­dent, thanked the sev­er­al spon­sors for part­ner­ing with the as­so­ci­a­tion in ho­n­our­ing the suc­cess­ful stu­dents for the ninth straight year.