Trinidad and To­ba­go has se­cured a spot on the glob­al aca­d­e­m­ic stage af­ter An­dre Bal­gar of the School of Prac­ti­cal Ac­count­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Lim­it­ed (SPAEL) re­ceived the pres­ti­gious Top Pa­per Award from the UK-based As­so­ci­a­tion of Busi­ness Ex­ec­u­tives (ABE).

Bal­gar earned the ac­co­lade for his per­for­mance in the “Lead­ing Strate­gic Change” mod­ule of the ABE Lev­el 6 Diplo­ma — achiev­ing the high­est mark world­wide in that sub­ject.

SPAEL Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Dr Jen­nifer Ramd­han de­scribed the achieve­ment as a proud mile­stone for the Ch­agua­nas-based in­sti­tu­tion, which on­ly re­cent­ly be­gan of­fer­ing the ABE Lev­el 6 Diplo­ma. “To have one of our stu­dents achieve the high­est glob­al mark in a crit­i­cal mod­ule such as Lead­ing Strate­gic Change demon­strates the strength of our aca­d­e­m­ic de­liv­ery and the po­ten­tial of our learn­ers,” she said.

Dr Ramd­han added that Bal­gar’s win al­so “val­i­dates our com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing world-class ed­u­ca­tion through glob­al­ly recog­nised pro­grammes like ABE.”

The Top Pa­per Award is giv­en to the high­est-scor­ing stu­dent glob­al­ly in each mod­ule of the ABE qual­i­fi­ca­tion — a wide­ly re­spect­ed cre­den­tial in busi­ness man­age­ment and lead­er­ship.

Bal­gar cred­it­ed his suc­cess to the sup­port of his lec­tur­ers and SPAEL’s learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment. “This award is as much theirs as it is mine. The guid­ance and sup­port I re­ceived through­out the pro­gramme made all the dif­fer­ence,” he said.

SPAEL says it will con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised pro­grammes as it builds its rep­u­ta­tion for pro­duc­ing glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive grad­u­ates.