Na­pari­ma Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do is re­joic­ing once again as one of its stu­dents Dar­ius Payne topped the Caribbean in Nat­ur­al Sci­ences while 24 oth­ers se­cured spots on the re­gion­al mer­it list in both the CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions.

Al­so achiev­ing top rank­ing were Math­ieu Be­har­ry, and Malique Au­guste who won top Caribbean awards for ex­cel­lence.

Be­har­ry seized the pres­ti­gious 2023 As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Cer­ti­fied Ac­coun­tants (AC­CA) CSEC Ac­count­ing Award while Payne emerged as a lu­mi­nary in the field of Nat­ur­al Sci­ences, clinch­ing the CXC CAPE award for the most out­stand­ing can­di­date. 

Au­guste se­cured the 2023 CAPE Caribbean Cen­tre for Re­new­able En­er­gy & En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy (CCREE) Top award for Build­ing and Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing Draw­ing.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Chris­t­ian Dookoo, the school’s man­ag­er and chair­man of the In­ter­view Com­mit­tee of the Sec­ondary Schools Board of Ed­u­ca­tion ex­pressed pride at the achieve­ments.

Dookoo said the school at­tained first place rank­ing in eight per cent of all sub­ject ar­eas of­fered by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil for the 2023 June CSEC Ex­am­i­na­tions.

Giv­ing an overview he said, “Four­teen stu­dents ranked first in Math­e­mat­ic, one ranked first in French and Eng­lish B, two ranked first and ninth.”

With CAPE re­sults, Dookoo: “We had 24 plac­ing in Re­gion­al Mer­it list. In Unit 1 Pure Maths, three stu­dents ranked first, sev­enth and eighth.

“In Build­ing and Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing Draw­ing we had four stu­dents who ranked first. Two stu­dents ranked fifth and ninth in com­put­er sci­ence. In physics one stu­dent ranked first.”

Out­lin­ing their se­cret to suc­cess, Dookoo said stu­dents at Na­pari­ma Col­lege had ac­cess to their teach­ers 24/7 and even while they stud­ied they could col­lab­o­rate. 

“The Board en­cour­ages work­shops for teach­ers and the Board pro­motes a cul­ture of ex­cel­lence at this school,” Dookoo said. He said there was a big broth­er sys­tem at the school to help younger ones.

Giv­ing an in­sight in­to their aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney, Payne, Au­guste and Be­har­ry told Guardian Me­dia they faced chal­lenges in time man­age­ment as well as dis­trac­tions from so­cial me­dia. 

Au­guste and Be­har­ry said they delet­ed their so­cial me­dia ac­counts to fo­cus on their stud­ies.

“So­cial me­dia can be­come very ad­dic­tive sim­i­lar to gam­ing. These are unique chal­lenges for every per­son. Gam­ing helps some stu­dents with cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty. For me, I had to delete so­cial me­dia from my phone,” Au­guste said.

Payne, who wants to be a physi­cian or sci­en­tist said he al­ways want­ed to ex­cel and this de­sire was honed when he came to Na­pari­ma Col­lege.

All three said they were ex­cit­ed about their aca­d­e­m­ic fu­ture and would be us­ing their present suc­cess­es to help pro­pel them fur­ther.