Ro­man Catholic School Board CEO Sharon Man­groo has praised the role faith-based ed­u­ca­tion plays in the lives of this coun­try’s fu­ture gen­er­a­tion.

She made the com­ment dur­ing an awards cer­e­mo­ny ho­n­our­ing the top per­form­ing stu­dents from the Trinidad Mus­lim League Inc (TML) who wrote the 2023 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion.

Dur­ing the awards cer­e­mo­ny at the TML Is­lam­ic Ed­u­ca­tion­al Cen­tre in St Joseph, Man­groo praised the stu­dents for their aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments.

She al­so ac­knowl­edged the role of faith prac­tices in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to dai­ly learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences, say­ing this served to in­stil val­ues with­in chil­dren es­sen­tial to their moral­i­ty.

Man­groo al­so point­ed out the role played by de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards in faith-based ed­u­ca­tion.

“Our fo­cus goes be­yond the pro­vi­sion of in­struc­tion in Math, Eng­lish, So­cial Stud­ies, Sci­ences, etcetera, to train­ing by words and ex­am­ple in our val­ues,” she said.

Top per­former Mi­la Zoro, of the TML Pri­ma­ry School, San Fer­nan­do, was cel­e­brat­ed for scor­ing the top rank at her school, and most no­tably for se­cur­ing the same at the na­tion­al lev­el.

This was dis­cov­ered af­ter her par­ents filed an ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. This prompt­ed the pres­i­dent of TML, Farz Khan, and oth­er of­fi­cials to ho­n­our Mi­la and the re­main­ing nine out­stand­ing stu­dents from their schools in St Joseph, San Fer­nan­do and Lib­ertville.

The TML stu­dents who copped first, sec­ond and third places in SEA 2023 were: TML, St Joseph— Is­maaeel Ali (1st); Is­abelle Ay­ow (2nd) and Sim­rah Tack­oor­cha­ran (3rd).

TML, San Fer­nan­do— Mi­la Zoro (1st); Zia Khan (2nd) and Arisa Ra­janand An­ish Ram­per­sad (3rd).

TML, Lib­ertville— Sajid Sook­nanan (1st); Josi­ah Fla­ment (2nd); and Asia Far­ri­er (3rd).

San Fer­nan­do TML has placed first in the SEA ex­ams ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 times. The school has al­so at­tained the high­est num­ber of top stu­dents in the coun­try from 2018 to 2023.

Re­flect­ing on this achieve­ment, Khan cit­ed team­work, de­ter­mi­na­tion and com­mit­ment as the prime qual­i­ties that made TML stu­dents suc­cess­ful in the ex­am­i­na­tion. He al­so con­sid­ered the TML Awards Cer­e­mo­ny as ev­i­dence of the in­sti­tu­tion’s role in hon­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic abil­i­ties of its stu­dents that are in­sep­a­ra­ble from their holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.

Par­ents, stu­dents, teach­ers, prin­ci­pals, mem­bers of the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion of the TML schools, and re­tired cur­ricu­lum of­fi­cer Shereen Khan were al­so in at­ten­dance.