Schol­ar­ship win­ner Sarah Ramdeo says ed­u­ca­tion is the key to free­dom from a life of hard­ship. This was the ad­vice she gave yes­ter­day to pupils dur­ing her vis­it to her for­mer pri­ma­ry school-Palmiste Gov­ern­ment. Ramdeo was one of this year's schol­ar­ship win­ners. She won a busi­ness schol­ar­ship. Yes­ter­day, she vis­it­ed Palmiste Gov­ern­ment to say thanks to the teach­ers of the 45-year-old in­sti­tu­tion, es­pe­cial­ly her for­mer Stan­dard Five teacher Mu­ni­ram Sookdeo

From Palmiste Gov­ern­ment Ramdeo moved on to Saraswati Girls' Col­lege. She then sat her Ad­vanced Lev­el ex­am­i­na­tions at Laxsh­mi Girls' Hin­du Col­lege. She now at­tends the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Ramdeo said grow­ing up in Palmiste there were lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple. She said that prob­lem still ex­ist­ed. Ramdeo said ed­u­ca­tion el­e­vat­ed peo­ple out of the cy­cle of pover­ty. She said all par­ents, de­spite their eco­nom­ic back­ground, should make the nec­es­sary sac­ri­fices to en­sure their chil­dren got an all­round ed­u­ca­tion and take full ad­van­tage of the ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties and pro­grammes of­fered by the State.