SEVENTEEN-year-old Queen's Royal College (QRC), Port of Spain pupil Michael Phillip is thanking God, his mother and hard work for achieving seven grade ones and two grade twos in this year's Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations.

"Credit to...God for the success, and my mother for believing in me so much and paying for lessons and taking time off to ensure I do well," he commented.

He was at QRC yesterday with some of his friends to collect his CSEC slip but they were informed that the slips would be ready today and were instead given a printed copy of the results.

Some schools began distributing the CSEC slips yesterday while staff at other schools, including St Joseph's Convent, reported that they would be receiving them between today and early next week.

The Express visited a number of schools in the Port of Spain area and the principals and vice-principals were generally pleased with the CSEC results.

QRC principal Lennard Hinkson reported that a number of pupils received eight, nine or more passes and many with five or six ones. He said there was a quality improvement over last year with about 90 per cent getting full

passes. He noted they received many more ones than last year and qualitatively there was a welcome improvement in the sciences. Questioned on whether he was pleased with the results, Hinkson said he was a "perfectionist" and is pleased where results are near perfect. "Too much room for improvement for me to be jumping for joy," he commented.

He said, however, that he thanked God for the blessings, noting that many schools do not perform as well as QRC, and he is thankful for the success of the pupils and celebrates with them.

At Holy Name Convent, vice principal Frances Lacaille-Perkins said the girls "did very well" in CSEC this year with a 100 per cent pass rate "across the board", which was normal for the school. She added that a "fair number" of pupils has grade ones across the board.

She said the results have been good for a number of years and this year continued that trend. Like Hinkson she noted there was always room for improvement. At Holy Name Convent, 16-year-old Anne Ragoobar, who had repeated CSEC, told the Express she was very happy with her results: all ones in three subjects, including a distinction in chemistry.

At St Mary's College, vice-principal Nigel Joseph said the results were good.

"As far as our cursory assessment looks it is good from the point of view that as high as 95 per cent of the students have gotten five and more subjects. In fact quite a number of them have gotten eight and nine passes," he said.

He said the results went up from last year when it "took a dip" and was in the high 80s.

St Mary's pupil Brandon Jones told the Express he received eight passes, five threes, two ones, one two and a five in add maths.

"I was hoping some of the threes would turn into twos," he quipped.

He added: "Other than that I happy."

The Express attempted to contact the communications department of the Education Ministry about the CSEC slip distribution via telephone but received no answer.