An­na-Lisa Paul

Hillview Col­lege’s Am­rit Gal­baran and Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School’s An­jali Ma­haraj are the 2020 Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners.

Gal­baran was award­ed in the cat­e­go­ry of En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies, In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, Math­e­mat­ics and Nat­ur­al Sci­ences; while Ma­haraj was award­ed in the cat­e­go­ry of Busi­ness Stud­ies, Cre­ative and Per­form­ing Stud­ies, Gen­er­al Stud­ies, Hu­man­i­ties/Mod­ern Stud­ies, Lan­guage Stud­ies and Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies.

A to­tal of 23 schools were award­ed schol­ar­ships for 2020 with Ma­haraj’s school earn­ing the most with 12.

Sur­round­ed by his par­ents Nor­ris and Bar­bara, along with sis­ters Priya and Amy, at his home in Curepe yes­ter­day, it was a cool and calm but ex­cit­ed Gal­baran who said the news had come as a big sur­prise.

Dressed in In­di­an at­tire ahead of last evening’s Shi­v­a­tri prayers, the 19-year-old said, “This was very over­whelm­ing to me.”

Part of the his­toric group that was forced to adapt to the changes wrought by the COVID-19 virus, the as­pir­ing doc­tor said, “We are all hu­mans and we have to adapt to change. I was able to adapt my stud­ies to suit the change in the for­mat of the ex­am­i­na­tion and I kept a clear eye on what I had to do and what I had to study for.”

Claim­ing the virus had not dis­tract­ed him in any way, he urged oth­ers “to just keep your eyes on the prize. If you have a goal, just work to­wards it.”

Jok­ing that he had al­so been hop­ing to be­come a “ma­gi­cian” on the side, as he is ob­sessed with cards and il­lu­sions, Gal­baran thanked God and his par­ents for al­ways sup­port­ing him.

Cred­it­ing his mom for en­sur­ing he had meals, clean clothes and a com­fort­able home in which to study, Gal­baran said his fa­ther in­vest­ed in an ad­vanced vir­tu­al sys­tem which proved to be “an as­set to my stud­ies.”

Hav­ing been ac­cept­ed by the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Gal­baran’s fam­i­ly said they will now re­con­sid­er if he will be go­ing abroad to study.

To those writ­ing ex­ams this year, Gal­baran said, “Adapt and be open to change, be open with your par­ents. Talk to them. Seek ad­vice from them. Seek ad­vice from your col­leagues. Do not be afraid to step out of your com­fort zone.”

Gal­baran said if one is daunt­ed by the re­duc­tion in the num­ber of schol­ar­ships be­ing award­ed, per­sons might not be as fo­cused.

He added, “Do not not be­lieve in your­self. You could be one of those 100.”

How­ev­er, he added, “It’s like a lot­tery, you have a chance. You just got to put in the work and don’t let that de­mo­ti­vate you. If they change how many schol­ar­ships they give, you change how much work you put in. It now be­comes hard­er to get a schol­ar­ship but when you do get it, it will be worth it.”

Gal­baran’s achieve­ment has been de­scribed by act­ing Hillview Col­lege prin­ci­pal Derek Bisses­sar as “the ic­ing on the cake.”

Fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which saw schools hav­ing to close their doors on March 16, 2020, Bisses­sar said it was un­der very try­ing cir­cum­stances this feat was ac­com­plished. He con­firmed the last time the school copped the pres­ti­gious award was in 2005.

Gal­baran’s lessons teacher Vanes­sa Ra­moutar-Singh said she was the first per­son to con­tact the fam­i­ly with the news af­ter read­ing it on so­cial me­dia. In­di­cat­ing her joy over the news, she said Gal­baran has al­ways been a hard-work­ing and dili­gent stu­dent who was fo­cused on what he want­ed. She tu­tored Gal­baran in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies.

Con­grat­u­lat­ing the re­cip­i­ents yes­ter­day as she an­nounced the award of 100 schol­ar­ships at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $35 mil­lion per year, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the 50 Open and 50 Ad­di­tion­al schol­ar­ships for the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2019/2020 were based on the re­sults of the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am (CAPE) 2020.

She said the top ten can­di­dates re­ceived schol­ar­ships com­pris­ing five Open and five Ad­di­tion­al in cog­nate groups based “sole­ly on aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance.”

The sub­ject group­ings in­clud­ed Busi­ness Stud­ies; En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies; Hu­man­i­ties/Mod­ern Stud­ies; Lan­guage Stud­ies; Nat­ur­al Sci­ences; Cre­ative and Per­form­ing Stud­ies; Gen­er­al Stud­ies; In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy; Math­e­mat­ics; and Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies.

Reaf­firm­ing Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing the fu­ture lead­ers of this coun­try, Gads­by-Dol­ly said while the num­ber of schol­ar­ships had been re­duced from 400 to just 100, the of­fer of a na­tion­al bur­sary would help many oth­er stu­dents to off-set fi­nan­cial costs mov­ing for­ward.

She said 500 na­tion­al bur­saries are now avail­able to be award­ed an­nu­al­ly to de­serv­ing stu­dents and in­vit­ed stu­dents to ap­ply.

“The in­tro­duc­tion of the Na­tion­al Bur­sary Pro­gramme pro­vides a means for en­sur­ing that the most vul­ner­a­ble groups, the most tal­ent­ed stu­dents and the most tar­get­ed ar­eas for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are sup­port­ed,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She said the new pro­gramme will al­low for the strate­gic ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of fund­ing mech­a­nisms avail­able un­der the min­istry; en­sures well-per­form­ing and tal­ent­ed stu­dents have ac­cess to high­er ed­u­ca­tion re­gard­less of so­cio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus with­out in­cur­ring debts and sup­ports na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment by align­ing bur­sary grants to pro­gramme ar­eas iden­ti­fied as meet­ing na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty.

The ap­pli­ca­tion form for na­tion­al bur­saries will be avail­able from March 15-April 12 on the min­istry’s web­site.

Gads­by-Dol­ly de­scribed this as “a dif­fer­ent type of sup­port” where 600 per­sons will now be re­ceiv­ing Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port.