Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly laud­ed Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School (NGHS) for its suc­cess­es in the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cils ex­am­i­na­tions, she said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is work­ing to en­sure there is eq­ui­ty in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the NGHS’s Speech Day and Awards Cer­e­mo­ny at the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed the will­ing­ness of spon­sors to do­nate prizes to­wards the event. Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed the en­thu­si­as­tic sup­port from spon­sors who con­tributed to the event, play­ful­ly sug­gest­ing to her team that NGHS Prin­ci­pal Karen Bal­ly should share her se­crets for se­cur­ing spon­sor­ship with oth­er schools.

“Ed­u­ca­tion is good busi­ness, and it’s every­one’s busi­ness,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She ac­knowl­edged that T&T stands at a cross­roads be­tween pre­serv­ing the val­ues of the past and prepar­ing for the fu­ture.

“We speak about eq­ui­ty in ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause we want what is hap­pen­ing here to be repli­cat­ed every­where. There are schools and stu­dents who do not have the ben­e­fit of this kind of op­por­tu­ni­ty, but we are work­ing hard to bring that eq­ui­ty, so all stu­dents can reach their full po­ten­tial.” Gads­by-Dol­ly said as she watched stu­dents re­ceive their cer­tifi­cates, awards, and prizes. She said it stirred mem­o­ries of her own school days at St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School. Draw­ing on T&T’s rel­a­tive­ly young his­to­ry, Gads­by-Dol­ly high­light­ed the im­por­tance of na­tion­al pride, re­call­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of in­de­pen­dence in 1962.

“It was a coun­try say­ing we can take care of our­selves.” The Min­is­ter said the chil­dren of those ear­ly years now lead the na­tion, and it is their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­stil the same sense of na­tion­al pride in to­day’s youth.

“We are prepar­ing the stage for you to take on this Trinidad and To­ba­go that we are all so proud of,” she told the stu­dents. “In a few years, the lead­ers of to­day will be re­placed by your gen­er­a­tion. That is why we in­vest so heav­i­ly in ed­u­ca­tion—to en­sure that as lead­ers to­day, we pre­pare you to lead, and per­haps, to do even bet­ter.” Mean­while, Bal­ly an­nounced that 61 NGHS stu­dents had achieved more than sev­en grade ones in the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­ams, with sev­en stu­dents earn­ing 10-grade ones. The school boast­ed a 100 per cent pass rate in 14 sub­jects, with 90 per cent in the oth­er eight. In the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE), 24 stu­dents achieved sev­en or more grade ones over the two-year pro­gramme, with one stu­dent achiev­ing 12 grade ones. The school at­tained a 100 per cent pass rate in 18 of 22 CAPE sub­jects.

Bal­ly praised NGHS’s com­mit­ment to holis­tic de­vel­op­ment, not­ing that the stu­dents ex­cel not on­ly aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly but al­so in ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.

“Our girls un­der­stand the im­por­tance of bal­ance—they play hard, but they study even hard­er,” Bal­ly said. “The aca­d­e­m­ic re­sults in the CXC ex­ams cer­tain­ly sup­port this.”