Cowen Hamil­ton Sec­ondary of Fifth Com­pa­ny Moru­ga has topped the stand­ings in the qual­i­fy­ing round of WASA's sec­ond Na­tion­al Sec­ondary Schools "In the Know with H2O-Waste­water and Reuse" Quiz Com­pe­ti­tion. The qual­i­fi­ca­tion round which com­menced with the launch of the com­pe­ti­tion on Jan­u­ary 16 end­ed on Jan­u­ary 20 with 16 schools go­ing for­ward to the pre­lim­i­nar­ies from among an ini­tial reg­is­tra­tion num­ber of 119. The Moru­ga school's over­all score was 158, just two points shy of the max­i­mum team score of 160.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing stu­dents had to each an­swer 40 sim­ple ques­tions in one hour in a com­put­er-based test con­duct­ed at WASA's Pub­lic Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre, St Joseph. The test fo­cused on gen­er­al is­sues sur­round­ing Waste­water Sec­tor de­vel­op­ment; Na­tion­al Waste­water Sys­tem; In­te­grat­ed Waste­water man­age­ment; Waste­water: Col­lec­tion, treat­ment, dis­pos­al and recla­ma­tion and reuse. How­ev­er, the stu­dent with the fastest in­di­vid­ual com­ple­tion time and with a full score of 40 was Dim­itri Pol­lard from Hillview Col­lege, Tu­na­puna, who com­plet­ed the test in five min­utes 44 sec­onds. The pre­lim­i­nary round will start on March 5. Be­fore this, there will be an ori­en­ta­tion ses­sion for the 16 com­pet­ing schools on March 1 at the PEC, WASA St Joseph. The stand­ings go­ing in­to the pre­lim­i­nar­ies are as fol­lows:

Cowen Hamil­ton Sec­ondary;

Holy Name Con­vent, Port-of-Spain;

Mir­a­cle Min­istries Pen­te­costal High School;

Holy Faith Con­vent, Cou­va;

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do;

Na­pari­ma Boys Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do;

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas;

San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral Sec­ondary (Govt Sec);

Hillview Col­lege;

St Joseph Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do;

Bish­op Anstey High, Port-of-Spain;

Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary;

St An­tho­ny's Col­lege

AS­JA Girls' Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do

St Bene­dict's Col­lege;

St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School