ASPIRING physicist, Zane Ramotar, who was the Head Prefect and Valedictorian of Queen’s College, has emerged as Guyana’s 2020 top performer of the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE).

In 2013, when he wrote the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), Ramotar was awarded a place at Queen’s College. After successfully writing 13 subjects at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination, he continued to pursue CAPE at the college.

Speaking to the Sunday Chronicle, Ramotar highlighted that during the two years of CAPE, he wrote Applied Mathematics (Units One and Two), Biology (Units One and Two); Chemistry (Units One and Two), Caribbean Studies, Communication Studies, Environmental Studies (Units One and Two); Physics (Units One and Two), Pure Mathematics (Units One and Two) and Integrated Mathematics. He scored 14 Grade Ones and one Grade Two, the latter in Applied Mathematics (Unit Two).

While pursuing CAPE, Ramotar was recognised as the school’s Head Prefect, and later valedictorian. This, he said, was the first time the same person has held the esteemed titles at the college. The announcement that Ramotar had topped CAPE was made on Friday during a virtual briefing by the Minister of Education, Ms. Priya Manickchand.

“When it hit, it was a big excitement,” Ramotar said, adding: “Something that really compounded this whole joy or ecstatic feeling was that we were blindsided by the actual release of the results; it came out of the blue.”

Though the announcement was unexpected, Ramotar was convinced that he would be among the country’s top performers, if not THE top performer. This was so because he’d topped the country during his first year of CAPE, when he scored seven Grade One passes. But his recognition was delayed for about six months, after major discrepancies were found in the results announced by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) in September last year. These discrepancies, raised by Guyana and other regional authorities, prompted a review process.

Now, six months later, the review process is not yet complete, but the Ministry of Education has highlighted that Ramotar topped. He was followed by Naomi Cambridge of St. Rose’s High, who scored 12 Grade Ones and two Grade Twos, and Christian Pile, his colleague from Queen’s College, who scored 11 Grade Ones and one Grade Two.

Over the past few months, Ramotar has been teaching physics at Queen’s College. With a vested interest in this subject area, he has applied to the University of Southern California (USC), in the United States, where he will be pursuing studies in Physics.

Though he is not yet sure exactly what career path he will pursue, he knows for certain that it will be something to do with physics, and that he will be doing some amount of research.