Thanks Galo for raising such a salient concern with respect to the above subject. In essence, I incline to support your concern with regards to how the selections were made, especially to send academically capable Solomon Islanders to study medicine. It is a common notion that studying to be a medical doctor is quite demanding such that it requires high GPA achievers. As usual, awarding such scholarships are very competitive with high academic prerequisites.

It was interesting for me, when I saw the photo of the awardees on the Solomon Times online. In fact some of the awardees were my former students at KGVI School and S.I USP Centre. As such, to some extent I have a fair idea about their academic capacity and attitude towards study. Well, I know that the selection panel had their own criteria in which I guess they had strictly used plus other measures which resulted with the awardees.

In line with Galo's concern, I hope the criteria for future selections for Cuban Scholarship Awards particularly in medicine be of high expectations. However, my concern now is for the appropriate authorities to closely and frequently monitor our awardees such that they perform to the required standards expected of them. I believe that learners as developing thinkers can develop their academic capacity and attitude to achieve what they strive for. But for the purpose of standards in assessment and selection in our education system, let our selection criteria for such scholarships be of high expectations such that scholars strive for the best.