Car­ol Quash

Aliya Ser­rette was one of two stu­dents to be award­ed the Pres­i­dent’s Medal for her per­for­mance in the 2025 Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions (CAPE), and she is the first stu­dent to bring that pres­ti­gious ho­n­our to her school.

The for­mer Bish­op Anstey Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE) stu­dent is the top per­form­ing stu­dent in busi­ness stud­ies, cre­ative and per­for­ma­tive stud­ies, gen­er­al stud­ies, mod­ern stud­ies and hu­man­i­ties, lan­guage stud­ies, and tech­ni­cal stud­ies cat­e­gories.

The award is giv­en to the top two can­di­dates na­tion­al­ly who demon­strate ex­cep­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance.

The an­nounce­ment of the Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners was made on Jan­u­ary 23. At the time of this in­ter­view, both Ser­rette and her moth­er, An­gelique De Mille-Ser­rette, were still in shock over the mile­stone ac­com­plish­ment.

“I still haven’t processed it, and I’m still very over­whelmed be­cause the Pres­i­dent’s Medal wasn’t even some­thing that was on my mind. When I saw the an­nounce­ment, I thought it was fake; that some­body was play­ing a prank on me or some­thing,” Ser­rette told the Sun­day Guardian.

But it came as no sur­prise to those who were charged with prepar­ing the 19-year-old for the CAPE ex­ams. And the fact that it came at a time when BATCE is get­ting ready to cel­e­brate its 25th an­niver­sary, just made it all the more mean­ing­ful.

“Aliya’s achieve­ment is not on­ly a re­flec­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic bril­liance, but of qui­et de­ter­mi­na­tion, re­silience, and faith in her own po­ten­tial. Her jour­ney re­minds us that suc­cess is built through dis­ci­pline, self-be­lief, and the courage to keep go­ing even when doubt tries to creep in,” act­ing head of ad­min­is­tra­tion Bri­an Wick­ham said.

Head of BATCE’s Sixth Form, Shinel­ly James, said the school’s ad­her­ence to in­clu­sive teach­ing prac­tices to sup­port qual­i­ty teach­ing and learn­ing has al­so con­tributed to its pos­i­tive school cul­ture that fos­ters col­lab­o­ra­tion over com­pe­ti­tion to cre­ate fu­ture na­tion builders, like Ser­rette, who work to cre­ate so­lu­tions by valu­ing each oth­er.

“From the out­set, she (Ser­rette) demon­strat­ed a strong work eth­ic, con­sis­ten­cy of ef­fort, and a gen­uine open­ness to feed­back—qual­i­ties that on­ly deep­ened over time and made her suc­cess well-de­served,” James said, adding that her teach­ers al­so spoke of her qui­et de­ter­mi­na­tion and a spir­it of ex­cel­lence that ex­tend­ed be­yond aca­d­e­mics in­to ex­tracur­ric­u­lar com­mit­ments, ground­ed in strong faith and pur­pose.

“In the class­room, Aliya was known for her cu­rios­i­ty and thought­ful ques­tions, nev­er al­low­ing con­fu­sion to go un­re­solved, while al­so be­ing re­spect­ful, well-round­ed, and a joy to teach, bring­ing pos­i­tive en­er­gy and warmth to those around her,” James said.

Ser­rette en­tered BATCE in 2023, look­ing for a change in en­vi­ron­ment from her pre­vi­ous school, St Joseph’s Con­vent, St Joseph, and to be able to do art de­sign, which was not of­fered at St Joseph’s Con­vent.

“I did bi­ol­o­gy and chem­istry, and I chose art de­sign be­cause in CSEC, I got a two, and I wasn’t sat­is­fied with that. I want­ed to get a grade that I was ac­tu­al­ly sat­is­fied with.”

She quick­ly adapt­ed to the school’s cul­ture, which in­volved so much more than aca­d­e­mics, and she ad­mired the ded­i­ca­tion of her teach­ers to the de­vel­op­ment of well-round­ed stu­dents and easy in­ter­ac­tion.

“Some­times it was like you could talk to them as if they were your friends, but there was still that lev­el of re­spect be­tween stu­dents and teach­ers.”

Ser­rette said prepa­ra­tion for CAPE ex­ams was more in­tense than for CSEC, with just months to pre­pare for each unit—a gal­lop­ing pace that she had no choice but to go at. For­tu­nate­ly, in ad­di­tion to her in­di­vid­ual stud­ies, she was able to re­ly on study groups with friends and the con­sis­tent guid­ance of her teach­ers.

“As stu­dents, we would of­ten help each oth­er out and just talk each oth­er through the work if we didn’t un­der­stand it… I feel like I’ve nev­er seen teach­ers work so hard just to cor­rect SBAs at all hours of the morn­ing, just to make sure that we got that one mark that would prob­a­bly change our en­tire grades for CAPE.”

She said a big part of keep­ing mo­ti­vat­ed in­volved cel­e­brat­ing their achieve­ments, big or small, and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the many co-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties of­fered by the school.

Ser­rette is now pur­su­ing her bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Hu­man Nu­tri­tion and Di­etet­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

She said she does not yet know the full de­tails of her open schol­ar­ship and is not sure what she will do af­ter her first de­gree.

She just knows that art will al­ways hold a spe­cial place in her heart.

“I like art in gen­er­al—paint­ing, sculpt­ing, draw­ing,” and she ap­pre­ci­ates the fact that her fam­i­ly nev­er judged her when she de­cid­ed to pur­sue it at sec­ondary school.

She re­called some years ago, how proud she was hav­ing had her work ex­hib­it­ed at her sis­ter Ak­ili’s med­ical school grad­u­a­tion. Ak­ili was an open schol­ar­ship win­ner in 2018.

“They were just ac­cept­ing; they didn’t pres­sure me to do any spe­cif­ic sub­ject or to get in­to any spe­cif­ic field of study. So I en­joyed that kind of free­dom with my fu­ture,” one that holds end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for her.