Broth­ers Alario and An­to­nio An­dal­cio, sixth and fifth form pupils of El Do­ra­do East Sec­ondary School, se­cured top ho­n­ours in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion’s (TTSEC) in­au­gur­al Na­tion­al Sec­ondary Schools In­vest­ing Com­pe­ti­tion, “In­vest. Learn. Grow.”

The award cer­e­mo­ny took place on Fri­day April 11 at the TTSEC’s of­fices at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Port of Spain. Alario won the first-place prize of $10,000 in se­cu­ri­ties do­nat­ed by TTSEC, while An­to­nio took third place, earn­ing $3,000 in se­cu­ri­ties spon­sored by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change. Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School’s Syd­ney Look Fong placed sec­ond, win­ning $5,000 in se­cu­ri­ties.

The com­pe­ti­tion, which ran from Feb­ru­ary 10 to April 4, 2025, in­vit­ed na­tion­als aged 13 to 19 to par­tic­i­pate in a vir­tu­al trad­ing plat­form us­ing TTSEC’s In­vestorQuest-TT.com. Over 349 stu­dents from 104 sec­ondary schools com­pet­ed by sim­u­lat­ing trades in stocks, bonds and mu­tu­al funds from fic­ti­tious com­pa­nies.

Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Ayan­na Gas­pard-Clarke, praised the com­pe­ti­tion for pro­mot­ing fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and align­ing with na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion pol­i­cy goals in crit­i­cal ar­eas like fi­nance, cod­ing and dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy.

TTSEC CEO Kester Guy and Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er Ellen Lewis al­so ap­plaud­ed the ini­tia­tive and called for fur­ther in­sti­tu­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion through for­mal agree­ments and long-term track­ing.

Spe­cial awards in­clud­ed:

￭Ves­signy Sec­ondary School, which earned $10,000 in ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­ri­als from the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion for hav­ing the high­est stu­dent reg­is­tra­tion (106 stu­dents)

￭David-Lee Skin­ner-Bal­lan­tyne, Head of Busi­ness Stud­ies at Cor­pus Christi Col­lege, who re­ceived a $5,000 teacher prize spon­sored by the Mu­tu­al Funds As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go