A group of five women have passed their Certified Administrative Professional exam after six months of hard work.

Kelly-Ann Robinson, Eulene Jones, Terry Watson, Sasha Castle-Siddiq and Carolina Crockwell all earned the qualification, scoring highly among the 311 international participants.

Ms Crockwell said: “We started out with a group of 11. I think everyone took to it differently at the start.

“I know I had a rough start. Some people were more prepared for what they were taking on than others, but at the end there was just the five of us.”

Ms Crockwell said that in addition to classes, she also had to balance her job and taking care of her young child.

“Just fitting in studying can be a challenge,” she said. “I can’t say I’m going to sit down and study at 5pm because at 5pm he might not co-operate.

“You have to be self-disciplined enough to set aside the time.”

Ms Robinson added: “My son is seven, so there’s a slightly different dynamic, but I still needed to balance work and life.

“I thought it was a great challenge. It pushed us to get all of that information into our heads and understand the bigger picture.”

Ms Jones said that the course was a challenge at first. She said: “It was a lot of work, and it was hard. I was overwhelmed at the beginning.

“I had been out of school for many years, so it was a challenge getting back into that mindset.”

However, she praised the course, saying that it covered a broad spectrum of topics.

Ms Jones added: “In the administration profession, a lot of people take you for granted. We do 99 things that are not in our job descriptions during the day.”

Ms Watson agreed. She said: “A lot of people see administrative people as just a secretary. My boss doesn’t, but there are some that don’t appreciate all the things that come with the job.”

Ms Castle-Siddiq added: “It was professional development, but also about understanding on a deeper level what it is to be a professional administrator.

“We learnt a lot about management and a lot about event planning. We learnt about the financial aspects of running a business, including things like balance sheets which come across our desks almost every day, but we don’t really get the chance to understand them on a deeper level.”

All of the women said they were thrilled to earn the certification and recommended the programme to other women in their field.

William Spriggs, who coached the study group, said he was excited that all those who took the exam achieved passes.

Mr Spriggs said: “They all put in hard and smart work over the last six challenging months to conquer the 350-question, three-hour CAP exam.

“I am so proud of them. I dubbed them the ‘Fab 5’ well before they took the September exam as I knew each one of them would be successful.

“They put in the time to truly earn their CAP exam success reward.”