An­na-Lisa Paul

Ce­line Roodal of Lak­sh­mi Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege, St Au­gus­tine and Shar­vaani Ram­per­sad-Ma­haraj of Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School, San Fer­nan­do are this year’s Pres­i­dent Medal win­ners. The two topped the is­land in the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE).

Roodal’s out­stand­ing achieve­ment has en­sured the LGHC main­tains its record of pro­duc­ing a Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ner as she has brought home the fifth con­sec­u­tive award for the school.

The joy­ous news which was an­nounced yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Port-of-Spain—came on the eve of to­day’s fu­ner­al for the for­mer sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), Sat Ma­haraj, who passed away on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

En­hanc­ing the dis­tin­guished schol­ar­ship lega­cies ex­ist­ing at both schools, Roodal led her school­mates to se­cure the most num­ber of schol­ar­ships this year - top­ping out at 40 (15 Open and 25 Ad­di­tion­al).

Roodal se­cured her schol­ar­ship in the area of En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies, In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, Math­e­mat­ics and Nat­ur­al Sci­ence.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Ram­per­sad-Ma­haraj and her class­mates se­cured a to­tal of 38 schol­ar­ships (17 Open and 21 Ad­di­tion­al).

Ram­per­sad-Ma­haraj se­cured her schol­ar­ship in the area of Busi­ness Stud­ies, Cre­ative and Per­for­mance Stud­ies, Gen­er­al Stud­ies, Lan­guage Stud­ies, Hu­man­i­ties and Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies.

Com­pli­ment­ing the awardees yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said the re­sults this year were in­dica­tive of the ex­cel­lent per­for­mance by stu­dents who con­tin­ued to work hard to achieve their goals. The list of schol­ar­ship win­ners was pre­sent­ed to Cab­i­net yes­ter­day and ap­proved for re­lease. Pro­vid­ing a pre­lim­i­nary analy­sis, Gar­cia said a to­tal of 400 schol­ar­ships were award­ed this year and to­talled TT $142,275,000.

A break­down re­vealed that 179 schol­ar­ships were award­ed in the Open cat­e­go­ry, while 221 schol­ar­ships were award­ed in the Ad­di­tion­al cat­e­go­ry.

Mean­while, fe­male stu­dents con­tin­ued to out­per­form their male coun­ter­parts as demon­strat­ed by the sta­tis­tics which re­vealed that 71.25 per cent of girls se­cured schol­ar­ships as com­pared to 28.75 per cent of males. The schol­ar­ships were split be­tween 285 girls and 115 boys.

Gar­cia ad­mit­ted this has been an area of con­cern for lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties for some time now, and re­quired a clos­er look at the cur­ricu­lum and syl­labus de­liv­ery. He said all school prin­ci­pals had been in­formed via a cir­cu­lar mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed Jan­u­ary 2, about the cri­te­ria the min­istry would use to se­lect schol­ar­ship win­ners and out­lined the new sub­jects be­ing of­fered at the CAPE lev­el.

Gar­cia said, us­ing this for­mu­la, they were able to de­ter­mine the 400 schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ents.

He claimed: “We con­tin­ue to see a vast im­prove­ment in the per­for­mance of our stu­dents in sec­ondary schools.”

Due to this year’s out­stand­ing re­sults—Gar­cia said they had been forced to re­vise the cri­te­ria used to award schol­ar­ships as the re­sults had ex­ceed­ed pre­vi­ous years.

Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer, Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran ex­plained that in 2016, Cab­i­net ap­proved cri­te­ria for the award of schol­ar­ships and set a cap of no more than 400.

He too echoed Gar­cia’s sen­ti­ments that “this year, the per­for­mance of stu­dents this year ex­ceed­ed per­for­mance last year.”

In 2018—26.1 per cent of stu­dents achieved Grade One’s in Unit One, while 26.8 per cent get­ting Grade Ones in Unit Two.

Seecha­ran said in 2019—29.8 per cent of stu­dents achieved Grade One’s in Unit One, while 34.5 per cent of stu­dents achieved Grade Ones in Unit Two.

“This year, the process for re­ceiv­ing a schol­ar­ship was much more com­pet­i­tive,” he added.

In or­der to qual­i­fy for a schol­ar­ship—stu­dents must have com­plet­ed a min­i­mum of eight units; be a cit­i­zen of T&T; achieved all Grade Ones; and this year—in or­der to nar­row down the field, it was ex­pand­ed to look at the stu­dents who man­aged to achieve on­ly Grade A pro­files due to the com­pet­i­tive re­sults.

Seecha­ran said ad­just­ments had to be made to nat­ur­al sci­ences, math­e­mat­ics and busi­ness groups, “be­cause the num­ber of stu­dents who qual­i­fied based on last year’s cri­te­ria and bench­mark ex­ceed­ed 400…so we had to ad­just.”

“With­in the cri­te­ria where we can­not sep­a­rate based on grades and grade pro­files, we go to TEE scores.”

The scores from the Ter­tiary En­trance Ex­am (TEE) can be used to de­ter­mine the rank and score of stu­dents in­to uni­ver­si­ty.

Jus­ti­fy­ing the de­lay in the an­nounce­ment of the re­sults, Gar­cia said while the data­base had been re­ceived from CXC on Oc­to­ber 23—they on­ly re­ceived the TEE scores on No­vem­ber 5, fol­low­ing which they had to analyse the re­sults and se­lect ac­cord­ing­ly. Asked if it was pos­si­ble that this year had pro­duced more than 400 schol­ar­ship win­ners—Gar­cia said the re­vised for­mu­la used to se­lect win­ners meant this had been cir­cum­vent­ed.

Boast­ing that 24 stu­dents from gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools had man­aged to se­cure schol­ar­ships this year, Gar­cia said this had in­creased from sev­en last year.

Pressed to say if there was any ba­sis for par­ents and stu­dents to chal­lenge the 2019 schol­ar­ship re­sults, both Gar­cia and Seecha­ran said any­one de­sirous of fil­ing a re­view was wel­comed to do so, and due process would be done.