Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance cor­re­spon­dent

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do emerged as the cham­pi­ons of the 4th Sec­ondary Schools’ Busi­ness Sim­u­la­tion Com­pe­ti­tion, sig­nalling not on­ly a ma­jor achieve­ment for the school but al­so a deep­er na­tion­al shift. Trinidad and To­ba­go’s next gen­er­a­tion is em­brac­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship, in­no­va­tion and busi­ness lead­er­ship at lev­els nev­er seen be­fore.

The win­ning Low­er Six team, con­sist­ing of Diego Ce­lestin, Mar­cus Mc­Don­ald, Ay­din Ali, Yis­rael Thomp­son, and Kiros Har­ris, rose above 31 schools to claim first place, earn­ing par­tial schol­ar­ships for un­der­grad­u­ate stud­ies, along with HP lap­tops and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for their teach­ers.

Sec­ond place went to the Har­mon School of Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tists from To­ba­go, rep­re­sent­ed by Suriyah Baksh, Chloe Ba­booram, Ja­da Paul, Sama­rah Ram­nar­ine, and Tanav Bhag­wan­deen,

Cou­va East Sec­ondary School se­cured third place with Form Five stu­dents Aria Pin­der, Malique Grif­fith, Jéanne Romeo, Kyle Den­nis, and Alyssa Abra­ham.

The awards cer­e­mo­ny took place on No­vem­ber 14, 2025, at the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness in Mount Hope, where hun­dreds of stu­dents, teach­ers, and ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials gath­ered to cel­e­brate the achieve­ments.

For decades, the coun­try’s bright­est stu­dents have been guid­ed in­to pre­dictable ca­reers such as med­i­cine, law and en­gi­neer­ing, but this year’s com­pe­ti­tion re­vealed a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al shift. The at­mos­phere at Arthur Lok Jack re­flect­ed a gen­er­a­tion no longer sat­is­fied with fol­low­ing a sin­gle path. As CEO of the busi­ness school, Mar­i­ano Browne, told stu­dents, the com­pe­ti­tion helps them un­der­stand that, “one path is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the on­ly path.”

Sup­port­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the sim­u­la­tion placed each school in charge of a vir­tu­al firm in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, where suc­cess de­pend­ed on op­er­at­ing prof­its, rev­enue and de­mand, sus­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tices, and over­all cu­mu­la­tive earn­ings. Stu­dents had to make de­ci­sions in re­al time, re­flect­ing the chang­ing re­al­i­ties of mod­ern busi­ness, where tech­nol­o­gy, an­a­lyt­ics, and dig­i­tal plat­forms dri­ve per­for­mance. In a world where as­sign­ments, sub­mis­sions and even board­room de­ci­sions have moved on­line, the com­pe­ti­tion mir­rored the new di­rec­tion of ed­u­ca­tion it­self.

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege’s vic­to­ry rep­re­sents more than a high score; it is the re­sult of a decade-long shift in mind­set. Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San Fer­nan­do en­tre­pre­neur­ship teacher, Jim­my Ramkhelawan, ex­plained that the school has been in­ten­tion­al­ly steer­ing stu­dents to­ward busi­ness and in­no­va­tion.

“Over the last ten years, Pre­sen­ta­tion rein­tro­duced en­tre­pre­neur­ship in­to the syl­labus, en­cour­ag­ing stu­dents to ex­plore non-sci­ence fields. Com­pe­ti­tions like this help main­tain that mo­men­tum. In 2018, Pre­sen­ta­tion al­so won the NSEC En­tre­pre­neur­ship Com­pe­ti­tion, and every mem­ber of that win­ning team went on to pur­sue In­ter­na­tion­al Sus­tain­able Busi­ness at Arthur Lok Jack. This year’s win con­tin­ues to fu­el that trans­for­ma­tion,” he said.

Team cap­tain Diego Ce­lestin de­scribed the vic­to­ry as a sign of re­silience and growth, say­ing, “Even in the face of chal­lenges, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San Fer­nan­do shows re­sis­tance.”

Be­yond tro­phies, the com­pe­ti­tion’s true val­ue lies in the long-term im­pact on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment, said an of­fi­cial at the func­tion. The top teams re­ceived schol­ar­ships, men­tor­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties, and de­vices such as tablets, phones, and lap­tops, along with pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment sup­port for teach­ers. These in­cen­tives em­pow­er stu­dents to think like in­vestors, founders, econ­o­mists, and in­no­va­tors, the very skills a chang­ing world de­mands.

As this year’s com­pe­ti­tion showed, the next gen­er­a­tion is ready to re­de­fine how the na­tion thinks about ed­u­ca­tion, busi­ness, and the fu­ture of work. In a coun­try once dom­i­nat­ed by tra­di­tion­al pro­fes­sions, these stu­dents are chart­ing new paths and prov­ing that T&T’s fu­ture busi­ness lead­ers are al­ready here.