Sascha Wil­son

As his moth­er hoist­ed him in­to the air, Hezeki­ah Re­ece burst out laugh­ing, hap­py and re­lieved that the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion was over.

Asked what he want­ed as a gift for his hard work and sac­ri­fice, Re­ece, a pupil of Vista­bel­la Pres­by­ter­ian School, said, “I al­ready got my re­ward be­cause I know I did my best in my ex­am.”

Guardian Me­dia spoke with sev­er­al pupils in South and Cen­tral Trinidad who were elat­ed that they could now re­lax and have fun.

Yoeang­ka Han­iff, a pupil of St Brigid’s RC School, said, “I feel re­lieved be­cause all the hard work and I hope I go to the school I want to go too.”

Amadez Williams, a Vos Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School pupil, said, “I feel very good be­cause I could fi­nal­ly rest af­ter sev­en years.”

Many of the pupils felt that the ex­am was “easy,” but a few had dif­fi­cul­ty with the Math­e­mat­ics pa­per.

“It was easy. It just had a few ques­tions that were hard in Sec­tion 2 of the Math pa­per,” said Saiesha Ma­hadeo, of Mon­key Town Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School.

Her class­mate, Vani Per­sad, said the ex­am was “good” and she was hop­ing to pass for her first choice.

“Easy” was the col­lec­tive re­sponse from a group of Palmiste Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School pupils.

How­ev­er, the day was al­so emo­tion­al for par­ents. Some of them cried, oth­ers of­fered words of en­cour­age­ment, while oth­ers prayed with their chil­dren be­fore they went in­to the ex­am room.

Djen­a­ba Bal­bosa-Marchan could not hold back the tears as she dropped off her daugh­ter at St Gabriel’s Girls’ RC School yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“Such an emo­tion­al day, be­cause she had worked so hard over the years to ac­com­plish this, to reach this aca­d­e­m­ic mile­stone, and I know she will suc­ceed in Je­sus’ name,” said Bal­bosa-Marchan.

Sev­er­al chil­dren were anx­ious about catch­ing up on video games, but their par­ents had a lot of out­door fun ac­tiv­i­ties and trips planned for them.

First-time SEA par­ent, Bri­an Al­lah, said, “We plan to go to To­ba­go, maybe Bar­ba­dos and Mi­a­mi.”

Mean­while, fa­ther Clint Lutch­man said he was plan­ning to take his son to Guyana, but first on their list was Star­bucks at South Park and lat­er piz­za and the movies.

Hap­py that the ex­am was fi­nal­ly over, par­ent Sarah Cole list­ed a few things she has in store for her daugh­ter. “Beach, movie, trav­el, hit the sis­ter isle a lot but, stuff like that.”