On­ly 2,000 out of the 9,000 stu­dents re­quired to at­tend the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme have en­rolled.

That’s 22 per cent of the stu­dents who scored less than 50 per cent in this year’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­ams.

While they have been placed in sec­ondary schools, the pro­gramme was set up to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al sup­port to bet­ter pre­pare them for this tran­si­tion.

The pro­gramme comes at a cost of ten mil­lion dol­lars.

To mo­ti­vate those en­rolled, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has start­ed a Turn-Up, Don’t Give Up mo­ti­va­tion­al cam­paign where in­flu­encers (en­ter­tain­ment, me­dia, and sports per­son­al­i­ties) meet face to face with the stu­dents.

On Fri­day at the East Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary School au­thor Eliz­a­beth Mon­tano, for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­baller Yohance Mar­shall and Lead As­sign­ment Ed­i­tor at Guardian Me­dia Joel Julien of­fered words of wis­dom and in­spi­ra­tion.

The three speak­ers en­cour­aged the stu­dents of that school, Tran­quil­li­ty Sec­ondary, Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary, Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary, and South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary to keep mov­ing for­ward and told them sto­ries of their own short­falls and how they over­came them.

Julien told a sto­ry about a thief who would sneak-in, in the dead of the night.

“This thief I was fac­ing is a thief called com­par­i­son,” he said.

The Lead As­sign­ment Ed­i­tor told the stu­dents that grow­ing up he used to com­pare him­self to his old­er broth­er and urged them not to do the same whether it’s with their friends or fam­i­ly.

“Al­ways study what you want to be­come…don’t study your friends who passed for a dif­fer­ent school,” he said.

Mon­tano, who is fa­mous­ly known as the moth­er of so­ca great Machel Mon­tano, al­so worked as a guid­ance coun­sel­lor. She ex­plained to the stu­dents the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion. She ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges the stu­dents faced dur­ing the pan­dem­ic but en­cour­aged them to per­se­vere as they move on to sec­ondary school.

“You have a fresh start…All I’m ask­ing you to con­cen­trate and ap­pre­ci­ate what you have been giv­en, you couldn’t ask for any­thing bet­ter, it’s not all coun­tries that give ed­u­ca­tion for free,” Mon­tano said.

Mar­shall shared that ear­ly in his foot­ball ca­reer one mis­take cost him a con­tract but he did not give up.

“We are all go­ing to face ad­ver­si­ty, and it will come in all dif­fer­ent shapes and forms…I didn’t get draft­ed, my con­tract was tak­en away, I cried,” he said.

He shared that af­ter be­ing down for a while he start­ed to train again and in 2014 while with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Foot­ball team, he got a chance to play against Ar­genti­na and Li­onel Mes­si.

“I could al­so boast that I am one of the on­ly de­fend­ers that Mes­si nev­er passed,” he said.

Mar­shall told the stu­dents that there will al­ways be ob­sta­cles but none too big to get over.

“Keep your dreams close to your heart, don’t let any­body take them away,” he added.

The Va­ca­tion Re­vi­sion Pro­gramme 2022 will run for four weeks; Ju­ly 18 to Au­gust 12, in a face-to-face for­mat with class­es be­ing con­duct­ed be­tween 9.00 am to 3 pm dai­ly.

Reg­is­tra­tion for the pro­gramme has since closed.