The Gambia Muslim Senior Secondary School in Banjul Saturday held its passing-out and price-giving ceremony for 2013/ 2014 academic year students.
The graduation ceremony held at the school grounds brought hundreds of people including teachers, parents and diplomats.
Speaking on the occasion, the head of the Madrasa, Mr Sowe, said it was a great honour for him and the entire school staff to witness the graduation of 748 students of which 730 are from the English Section and 18 students from the Arabic Section.
He said in the English Section there were 358 boys and 372 girls while in the Arabic Section there were 13 boys and 5 girls.
He said graduation ceremonies are occasions of mixed feelings of parting with the students that have been passing and pursued of these great institutions for the past three years.
During this period, he added, the school had been able to adopt them as members of the school family thinking of all the efforts they have undertaken in moulding them and they are now leaving them for the wider world and this surly brings sad memories.
He said teachers and heads of Muslim Senior Secondary School family were delighted for having been succeeded in educating and training these students in both characters and learning to an appreciated level.
Mr Sowe said he was proud to present the ladies and gentlemen as mature and fully prepared persons ready to tackle the challenges in life after school and in the wider world.
This occasion brings to an end a long term period of academic and discipline, he said.
In addition, he said, the students must not rest after senior secondary school as it is the beginning of a long journey and they must be serious in whatever capacity they find themselves in future.
He said this is a period in which they have to make critical decisions and they must be prepared to take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions and actions.
The guest speaker, Sulayman A. Njie, former principal of the school and now coordinator of Matrix Training Institute, said in every man and woman’s life there comes a time of ultimate challenge.
“A time when every resource we have is tested, a time when life seems unfair, a time when our faith, our values, our patience, our compassion and our ability to persist are all pushed to our limits and beyond,” Mr Njie said.
Some people use such tests as opportunities to become better people and others allow their experiences of life to destroy them but graduates should not let that happen to them, he added.
He said that in the course of the three years in Gambia Muslim Senior Secondary School, the graduates had been trained to be very good citizens of the country.
At the end of the ceremony each of the graduate students was awarded with a certificate of attendance as an attestation that they have completed their senior secondary school career in the Gambia Senior Secondary School.
