Presentation College, St Joseph's Convent take top academic awards

The 2013 President's Medal for academic achievement will be awarded to two students - one from Presentation College, Chaguanas and the other to St Joseph's Convent.

The winners are Abhinav Karan and Shelimiah Peterkin. Karan won top marks in the CAPE examinations in Maths, Science, Environmental Science and Technology; Peterkin led the field in Business, Languages and Modern Studies.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar congratulated both students Thursday and announced that there wioll be more scholarships this year. "Schools are doing so well that I’m very proud to announce that we’ve increased the number of scholarships coming out of the CAPE/Cambridge exam," she stated.

She gave some comparative figures to show the steady increase:

• 2009 - 256 scholarships
• 2010 - 329
• 2011 - 354
• 2012 - 376
• 2013 - 428 to be awarded 

Speaking at an event at the St. James Secondary School where she distributed laptop computers to form one students the Prime Minister reminded students that education is the passport out of poverty.

So far her government has given out 68,850 free laptops to students and 4,000 to teachers.

“I knew that the only way to ensure that our citizens keep up and ensure they were globally competitive and relevant in this new age, was to be on par with these amazing technological advancements," Persad-Bissessar stated.