About 500 students write exams to contest in the NSMQ – PRESEC

The management of the Presbyterian Boys Secondary School (PRESEC) says it conducts examinations to select qualified contestants to represent the school in the National Science and Mathematics Quiz (NSMQ) each year.

Dzidefo Afram, the Presbyterian Boys Secondary School (PRESEC) Coordinator for the 2023 NSMQ in an interview said the students undergo rigorous processes to be selected to represent the school in the annual national competition.

Describing the selection process as highly competitive, he indicated that before the final contestants are selected, the school takes the interested persons who want to represent the school through several internal competitions.

Dzidefo Afram in a discussion with Rainbow Radio, disclosed that the selection process is intense since interested students are made to write the examination, and at some points, 500 prospective students participate.

“Through the exams, we remove some people who we think are not up there until we get the number that we want. Sometimes we select five, then from the third term we select six, and in some instances, we select all eleven,” he said.

Aside from that, the Presbyterian Boys Secondary School (PRESEC) Coordinator for the National Science and Mathematics Quiz said the school organises interclass competitions to determine who is qualified to participate.

The PRESEC NSMQ Coordinator explained that these processes are important because they allow them to prune the numbers down until the final team of five or fewer students is finally selected to represent the school.

He further revealed that when the first-year students are admitted, the school talks to them about the quiz, and in their second semester, they do interclass science and math quiz competitions with over 24 science classes participating.

He added that in the second year, the school introduced four new science classes for specially gifted students.

He said before the interclass competitions, the seniors who were already participants in the quiz coached the Form 1 students to make the competitions competitive.

It is after the competition that the students are made to write entry exams to determine who can qualify for the stage.