AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Some­times, when you least ex­pect it—but con­tin­ue to work hard—the unimag­in­able can hap­pen. That’s ex­act­ly what hap­pened for 2026 Pres­i­dent’s Medal awardee Aliya Ser­rette of Bish­op Anstey High School and Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE).

The 19-year-old is one of two stu­dents to re­ceive the pres­ti­gious award for out­stand­ing na­tion­al per­for­mance in the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE). The an­nounce­ment comes as BATCE cel­e­brates its 25th an­niver­sary.

Speak­ing at the school’s cel­e­bra­tion cer­e­mo­ny in Trinci­ty yes­ter­day, Ser­rette said she was sur­prised and cu­ri­ous up­on re­ceiv­ing no­ti­fi­ca­tion of the award, hav­ing had no pri­or knowl­edge of what it en­tailed.

“My on­ly goal was to do the best I could in my ex­ams,” she said.

“I knew of the Pres­i­dent’s Medal, but I didn’t know ex­act­ly what it was. So when I heard about it, I was like, ‘okay, so what is this?’”

She added that her mo­ti­va­tion came from a de­sire to ex­cel in art af­ter feel­ing her CSEC per­for­mance had fall­en short of her ex­pec­ta­tions. “I re­al­ly want­ed to do art be­cause the grade I got in CSEC wasn’t to my stan­dard, so I want­ed to prove to my­self that I could do bet­ter,” she ex­plained.

Last month, Ser­rette was an­nounced as the top-per­form­ing stu­dent in the Busi­ness Stud­ies, Cre­ative and Per­for­ma­tive Stud­ies, Lan­guage Stud­ies, Mod­ern Stud­ies/Hu­man­i­ties, and Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies group­ing, based on CAPE re­sults.

Ser­rette is now pur­su­ing a BSc in Hu­man Nu­tri­tion and Di­etet­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, with as­pi­ra­tions of a ca­reer in sports nu­tri­tion, while main­tain­ing her cre­ative in­ter­ests.

Her moth­er, An­gelique De­Mille-Ser­rette, said she was moved to tears up­on hear­ing the news. “Sup­port is im­por­tant. Be there, en­cour­age. I didn’t put any pres­sure on Aliya at all. Just be there for them and lis­ten… sup­port, 100 per cent,” she said.

Ser­rette ad­vis­es oth­er stu­dents to man­age their work­load and recog­nise their lim­its. “Don’t push your­self be­yond your lim­its. You’ll def­i­nite­ly feel tired … you need to re­lieve your stress through some means, and al­so, don’t com­pare how much you’re do­ing to how much oth­er peo­ple are do­ing,” she said.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath was ex­pect­ed to at­tend the cer­e­mo­ny but was ab­sent. This did not stop BATCE from cel­e­brat­ing the school’s suc­cess, which in­clud­ed five open schol­ar­ships and six ad­di­tion­al awards.

Ac­cord­ing to act­ing head of ad­min­is­tra­tion Bri­an Wick­ham, the school re­mains proud of the ac­com­plish­ment and con­tin­ues to pri­ori­tise both aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence and dis­ci­pline, aim­ing to help stu­dents de­vel­op in­to re­spon­si­ble and cre­ative mem­bers of so­ci­ety.

“I mean the main thing for us is en­sur­ing that at the end of the day we put out re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens,” Wick­ham said. “This is one of the dri­ving mantras of this in­sti­tu­tion—en­sur­ing that our stu­dents de­vel­op holis­ti­cal­ly, and that they go out there as cre­ative and re­spon­si­ble mem­bers of so­ci­ety.”