Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School’s Eliz­a­beth Singh and Bish­op Anstey High School East/Trin­i­ty Col­lege East’s (BATCE) Aaliyah Ser­rette are the 2025 Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners.

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Prakash Per­sad made this an­nounce­ment in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. The award of the Pres­i­dent’s Medals and Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ships is based on the re­sults of the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE).

Per­sad re­mind­ed both win­ners, who are among 105 schol­ar­ship win­ners se­lect­ed by the min­istry, that their per­for­mances dur­ing the pe­ri­od of their stud­ies will be mon­i­tored by the min­istry’s Schol­ar­ship De­part­ment, “and there­fore, they are kind­ly urged to keep their cu­mu­la­tive grade point av­er­age up to the re­quired and re­quest­ed lev­el.”

“The na­tion looks for­ward to their con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment up­on the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of their stud­ies,” Per­sad told the House.

Per­sad said Singh was the top-per­form­ing stu­dent in the En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies, In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy, Math­e­mat­ics and Na­tion­al Sci­ence group­ing.

Ser­rette was the top-per­form­ing stu­dent in the Busi­ness Stud­ies, Cre­ative and Per­for­ma­tive Stud­ies, Lan­guage Stud­ies, Mod­ern Stud­ies/Hu­man­i­ties and Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies group­ing.

Schol­ar­ships, open and ad­di­tion­al, are award­ed an­nu­al­ly to the top-per­form­ing stu­dents in ten cog­nate group­ings: Busi­ness Stud­ies; Cre­ative and Per­form­ing Stud­ies; En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies; Mod­ern Stud­ies/Hu­man­i­ties; In­for­ma­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies; Lan­guage Stud­ies; Math­e­mat­ics; Nat­ur­al Sci­ences; Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies; and Gen­er­al Stud­ies.

To be el­i­gi­ble, can­di­dates must be a T&T cit­i­zen and must at­tain at least eight units grades at one or two, over a pe­ri­od not ex­ceed­ing two con­sec­u­tive years.

From among all the Open Schol­ar­ship win­ners, the Pres­i­dent Medals are award­ed to the top two can­di­dates who achieved eight grade ones, with 24 As in their pro­file by us­ing the high­est to­tal score.

One medal is award­ed in the cat­e­go­ry com­pris­ing En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies, In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy, Math­e­mat­ics and Nat­ur­al Sci­ences. The oth­er medal is award­ed in the cat­e­go­ry com­pris­ing Busi­ness Stud­ies, Cre­ative Writ­ing and Per­form­ing Stud­ies, Gen­er­al Stud­ies, Mod­ern Stud­ies/Hu­man­i­ties, Lan­guage Stud­ies and Tech­ni­cal Stud­ies.

Singh and Ser­rette topped the list of 105 schol­ar­ship award win­ners, he said. This com­prised 47 Open and 58 Ad­di­tion­al Schol­ar­ships. Per­sad said Cab­i­net agreed to the num­ber—which was two more than in 2025—and the awards to Singh and Ser­rette. In terms of gen­der, 39 schol­ars were males and 66 were fe­males.

Per­sad said the an­nu­al ex­pen­di­ture in re­spect of the award of the 105 schol­ar­ships is es­ti­mat­ed to be $35.8 mil­lions.

He added, “Con­grat­u­la­tions are ex­tend­ed to Eliz­a­beth Singh and Aliya Ser­rette and all the 2025 schol­ar­ship win­ners. The Gov­ern­ment, the min­istry, the na­tion, their par­ents, fam­i­lies and schools are sure­ly proud of these achieve­ments.”

The girls’ schools yes­ter­day con­grat­u­lat­ed them on their achieve­ments.

The BATCE teach­ing team took to Face­book, post­ing, “As we proud­ly cel­e­brate 25 years of ex­cel­lence at Bish­op Anstey High School East & Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE), we are ho­n­oured to recog­nise Aaliyah Serette, 2025/26 Pres­i­dent’s Medal Awardee.

In this mile­stone year for our in­sti­tu­tion, Aaliyah’s achieve­ment stands as a pow­er­ful tes­ta­ment to BATCE’s lega­cy of aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence, lead­er­ship, and all-round de­vel­op­ment over the past quar­ter-cen­tu­ry. Her ded­i­ca­tion and out­stand­ing per­for­mance con­tin­ue to in­spire our stu­dents and af­firm our com­mit­ment to shap­ing fu­ture lead­ers for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Naps’ man­age­ment mean­while post­ed, “We are ex­cit­ed to an­nounce Miss Eliz­a­beth Singh as the re­cip­i­ent of the 2025 Pres­i­dent’s Medal Gold in Cat­e­go­ry One - Nat­ur­al Sci­ences! This dis­tin­guished ho­n­our recog­nis­es her ex­cep­tion­al achieve­ment, ded­i­ca­tion, and ex­em­plary ser­vice to our school. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Miss Singh for up­hold­ing the lega­cy of Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School with dis­tinc­tion!”