Thirty-two students were on Tuesday, November 2, awarded Government scholarships for outstanding performance in the 2021 grade-six Primary Exit Profile (PEP).
Four pupils, who are the island’s highest achievers from a primary, all-age, or primary and junior high school, received scholarships valued at $180,000 each.
The JAG Smith and Marcus Garvey scholarships, awarded to the top girl and top boy went to Adrianna McDougall, formerly of Ocho Rios Primary School in St. Ann, and Oshane Ellis, who attended Half-Way Tree Primary, respectively.
Former student of the Jessie Ripoll Primary School in Kingston, Kayla Callum, received the George William Gordon Scholarship for being the second highest ranked girl, and Lyssons Primary graduate, Dajanique Hylton, was awarded the Paul Bogle Scholarship for being the highest ranked student from a primary school in St. Thomas.
The remaining 28 students – 14 girls and 14 boys – were awarded scholarships valued at $100,000 each.
Education, Youth and Information Minister, Fayval Williams, in her address at the virtual awards ceremony, said that despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic “today’s celebration is a reminder that we can overcome adversity”.
“We know that success does not come easy for many students, but it is exactly through our student’s successes that we learn that nothing is impossible,” she noted.
Minister Williams said that the Ministry will continue to implement measures that will enable students to perform at a higher level of excellence with the implementation of the primary specialist teacher model.
“Having specialist teachers in our primary schools aims to improve student performance across the board by reorganising the delivery of instruction in the core areas of mathematics, language arts, science and social studies,” she noted.
Acting Permanent Secretary, Maureen Dwyer, said that the Ministry is committed to “seeing more students meeting the criteria to be recipients of scholarships”.
“We here at the Ministry will continue to work with our teachers by organising workshops under the direction of our Student Assessment Unit and the Core Curriculum Unit to enable more of our teachers to do a good job in preparing our students,” she added.
