The new breed of Guyana Scholars

Sep 12, 2010 News

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Travis Braithwaite

By Dale Andrews

A few years ago I revisited Queens’ College for a special reunion General Assembly and was immediately struck by the deep seated changes at the institution I once attended.
First, the Chairperson was the Headmistress (note, not headmaster) and the Head Prefect was, yes, another female.
This gave credit to the argument that more women are taking up positions that were once reserved only for males.
I attended QC in its co-ed days but throughout my years there, except for one Acting Headmistress, the school remained male dominated.
All the Head Prefects that I encountered were male and except for a very few occasions, the high achievers were all male.
Now, I don’t want to appear chauvinistic, but these things crossed my mind when I saw the results of this year’s GCE ‘A’ Level examinations.
This year the top 10 students were all male and it took me back to those years when the names of Guyana Scholars hardly included females, not that the females were not worthy of such accolades. In fact they have been dominating the education scene for several years and it was felt that this trend will continue unabated.
They were excelling in subject areas that were previously dominated by the males and for some period it was felt that a woman will soon take over the medical and engineering fields. But this year it was as if the men decided to take back that mantle, and despite the many distractions, they proved the skeptics wrong.
At QC, there are plaques on the walls highlighting the achievements of those persons who were deemed Guyana scholars for their outstanding performances at the GCE A levels.

Names such as the late Forbes Burnham and Fred Wills come to mind, as well as Haslyn Parris.
In those days, they needed to pass three subjects with distinction to qualify as a Guyana Scholar.
Later, when the administration adopted the points system –six points for each distinction- a student needed twelve points to qualify as a Guyana Scholar. Good grades in at least three subjects would have put one in that bracket, and that would have been quite an achievement.
But what is shocking this year was that most of the top performers were way beyond that benchmark.
In fact, the top student got the maximum 24 points-wow!
Using the points system at least 10 others could be considered Guyana Scholars.
I managed to run into a few of the top GCE ‘A’ level students and while many would think of them as nerds, they seemed to be the average young man who has a girlfriend and who does the things that any normal boy in his teens would do.
Except for their Mathematics teachers, Mr. Carryl and Mrs. Jordan, this year’s Guyana Scholars had to make do by studying mostly on their own.
Take Travis Braithwaite who secured 13 points at the examinations.
Although he finished outside of the top 10, he would have easily qualified as a Guyana scholar in my time.
For this product of a single parent home (although he gets support from his father,) it had a lot to do with his commitment.
“Chemistry and Biology, we had to study all by ourselves. Most of the work was done out of school, at home, and you had to be committed. I am proud of my achievement, I have worked very hard, I wanted to do better, yes,” Braithwaite told this newspaper.
As with almost everything else at Queen’s College, competition for the top places was stiff but there is no envy among the top students.

Most of the top students agree that preparing for an examination is not all about the books. They believe that while there should be more focus, one should not neglect the other activities that make up school life.
“You have to find time for other stuff. Play a bit of cricket with friends, talk on the phone, watch television. That is something that many students look past. Whenever you’re studying, you have to have a balance and play is just as important as studying,” Braithwaite advised.
I have often heard that males experience more distractions than their female counterparts while at school.
Sachin Ramsarran, who obtained three distinctions for a maximum 18 points, believes that it is much more difficult for the men to be always the high achievers, which makes this year’s results all the more satisfying. “Being a male, you have to be in control of the situation. We have to be accustomed to the distractions because later in life it is the male who has to take responsibility for his family, so we are getting accustomed to the distractions,” Ramsarran pointed out.
Physics, Pure Mathematics and Further Pure Mathematics were the subjects he excelled in and is aspiring to be an electrical engineer.
Although he had the option of doing more subjects, the only child for his parents concentrated on the ones he felt were most relevant to his future studies.
He had help from a former student who returned to the school.
Ramsarran believes that the performance of males this year was not surprising.
“What you find is that going from first to fifth form, the performance of the girls gradually decrease and the boys would increase. Going into the A levels, the boys would always come out on top. I don’t know what it is with the A levels that mess them (girls) up,” Ramsarran reasoned.
Dinesh Sukhu, with four A’s, managed 21 points and was among the top three GCE A level performers and he plans to be a Civil Engineer.

He, too, was not surprised by the male dominated top 10 A level performances.
According to Sukhu, because the females write more subjects at the O Levels, it is expected that they will be among the top performers there.
“When it comes to the A levels, in previous years it has always been the boys so we always knew that it was going to be a set of boys topping at this year’s A levels,” Sukhu said.
Most of the top performers were always confident that the batch of 2010 would have excelled, judging from the performance during their lower sixth form year.
Come next year, the British GCE ‘A’ level examination will be fully replaced by the CAPE, a Caribbean equivalent.
The 2010 scholars are all of the view that while the CAPE examination covers a wider range, the GCE is more in dept and the questions are so structured that it encourages much more thinking and reasoning as opposed to straightforward answers.
“Honestly, the amount of effort I put into my CAPE subject wasn’t as much as I put into the GCE. The thing is that GCE is more application and you go in dept but CAPE is just like you read something, recall and write. GCE is more thinking,” Sukhu said.
“The thing is with CAPE, they give you a whole list of topics you have to study and then the exam is poor because it hardly covers anything, whereas GCE, they will give you a couple of topics to study but you go in dept. At the end of the day you understand a lot more from the GCE than you do from CAPE because you are all over the place and you cannot apply it,” he added.
Stefan Hutson was also among the top achievers. Like all boys his age, girlfriends would normally be one of the major distractions.
But this did not affect Stefan, since according to him, his girlfriend was also involved in studying for examinations.
They used their association to great advantage since they helped out each other whenever it was necessary.
All of this year’s scholars with whom I spoke were high in praise for their parents whom they said provided them with most if not all of what they wanted to make them successful.
While some of them were still tasked with the usual housework, others were given that space to study and play without hindrance.
But how does it feel to have their names associated with the other Guyana scholars of the past? “GOOD”! Was the overwhelming response.

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