Girls top boys in Common Entrance

Nayla Pierre, topped this year’s Common Entrance with grades of 89 percent for English, 95 for Math and 91 for General Paper. She is presently on holiday in the US with her parents Rhol and Sandra Pierre of Kingstown visiting her elder brother Brenol who is at university there.{{more}}
Two females head the list of passes of this year’s Common Entrance Exams.
Nayla Pierre and Yan He, both of the Kingstown Preparatory School, have done their school proud, while Joshua Williams, a student of the Windsor Primary carried the banner for his male counterparts in third place.
The Ministry of Education has reported that 37 percent of the students sitting the exam (979) passed from the 2644 who sat the exam. This compares with 43.84 percent passes in 2003 when 2582 sat and 1132 passed.
The ministry also reported that the rural schools performed well, taking 48 percent of the first 100 places in the exams. The top rural performers included Cherika John, Kenvorn Cuffy and Shameka Spring, all from the Georgetown Government School, who placed 4th, 8th and 10th repectively. Zascha Robertson, a student from the Lowman’s Leeward Primary, tied for 4th place.
The top ten also included students from the Marriaqua and Petersville Primary Schools.
But the Grenadines schools were not to be left out of the top rankings. G. Chizeki James of the Stephanie Browne Primary on Union Island placed 11th while students from the Anglican and the Paget Farm Primary Schools on Bequia and from the Mustique Primary placed in the top 100.
The Ministry of Education has also reported that 21 percent of the students sitting the School Leaving Examination were successful. A total of 640 persons sat those exams which give students who are older than the uusal Common Entrance students’ age the opportunity of being accepted into a secondary school. Those passing this exam are normally accepted into Form 2.
Some 64 boys and 74 girls passed this year’s School Leaving Exam.
Last year the same number of students wrote this exam with 161 or 25.2 percent of them being successful.
All successful students from these exams are provided with free secondary places at either a government-owned or a government assisted secondary school.
The Ministry of Education last year introduced an innovative method of placing students who had not passed the Common Entrance Exams into secondary schools. That move was part of the ministry’s quest to achieve universal secondary education by the year 2006.