Sus­tained ap­plause greet­ed Par­a­lympic swim­mer Shan­ntol Ince af­ter her mov­ing vale­dic­to­ry ad­dress at the 2012 grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary School last Wednes­day. Ince urged her fel­low stu­dents to "put past fail­ures be­hind you and strive for what you be­lieve in. Some of us may not know what we want to be, but we should al­ways aim for the top." In an ad­dress punc­tu­at­ed with hu­mor­ous anec­dotes about the past five years at Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary, Ince rem­i­nisced about the ex­cit­ing and mem­o­rable times she spent at school. "Our ed­u­ca­tion over the past five years has cer­tain­ly made a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on our lives. We ap­pre­ci­ate the hard work, dis­ci­pline and knowl­edge that our teach­ers have in­stilled in us. "We want to thank the en­tire staff at Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary, and our par­ents and guardians, for guid­ing us through these five years and mould­ing us in­to the young peo­ple that we are to­day," Ince said.

A mul­ti­ple-medal win­ner at re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al par­a­lympic games, Ince is one of six na­tion­al ath­lete am­bas­sadors spon­sored by en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT). She will rep­re­sent T&T at the 2012 Par­a­lympic Games to be held in Lon­don. Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary prin­ci­pal, Samuel Bowen, point­ed to the pos­i­tive aca­d­e­m­ic re­sults achieved by the cen­tral school for the aca­d­e­m­ic term 2011/12 The school gained 58.1 per cent full cer­tifi­cates with five pass­es or more (Grades One and Two). Gas­par­il­lo al­so per­formed well above the na­tion­al av­er­ages in Eng­lish A and Math­e­mat­ics. The fea­ture ad­dress was de­liv­ered by Pri­or Joseph, pres­i­dent of the Gas­par­il­lo Sec­ondary Past Pupils' As­so­ci­a­tion, who ap­pealed to the grad­u­ates to join the as­so­ci­a­tion and con­tribute in the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of their al­ma mater.