Anil Beep­at, the fa­ther of one of the top per­form­ing SEA stu­dents na­tion­wide, is urg­ing par­ents to step up to en­sure the suc­cess of their chil­dren.

Beep­at's 12-year-old son, Michael, a stu­dent of the Av­o­cat Vedic Pri­ma­ry School, placed sec­ond over­all among the 18,180 stu­dents who sat the ex­am in May.

Michael, an as­pir­ing as­tro­naut, passed for his first choice school, Na­pari­ma Boys' Col­lege.

He was al­so among six stu­dents at the school to place with­in the top 200 scor­ers in the ex­am. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia vis­it­ed the school and pre­sent­ed Michael with his re­sults yes­ter­day.

"Michael re­al­ly is an out­stand­ing stu­dent, he nev­er said no, he nev­er com­plained for all the work he would have had, for all the past pa­pers he had to do," his fa­ther said, beam­ing proud­ly.

"This last month lead­ing up to the ex­am we were very struc­tured with him and he nev­er com­plained. He went to every ex­tra les­son. He was ready, prompt, on time and he re­al­ly did the best he could do and we could on­ly hope that he did well and this is over the top for us."

He ad­vised par­ents, how­ev­er, that the se­cret to a suc­cess­ful child was good par­ent­ing.

"It's re­al­ly an amaz­ing feel­ing to be a par­ent. I want to un­der­score the im­por­tance of par­ent­ing, be­ing par­ents to your chil­dren and not on­ly de­pend­ing on the teach­ers. Teach­ers will on­ly take you so far.

"Par­ents and good par­ent­ing... you need to re­al­ly fo­cus on these kids and spend time with them and their school­work. That is the se­cret to any suc­cess­ful child."

His wife, Hema, chimed in: "En­sure your child has a study rou­tine every­day, no mat­ter what. Cram­ming is nev­er go­ing to work.

"Make sure you cov­er an hour, an hour-and-a-half, every­day, week­ends, pub­lic hol­i­days, just be con­sis­tent, cov­er the syl­labus, do the prac­tice pa­pers, get your tim­ing in, that is the on­ly thing that will en­sure suc­cess."

Asked what the fam­i­ly would do to cel­e­brate Michael's achieve­ments, his moth­er said her younger son had ex­pressed an in­ter­est in vis­it­ing At­lantis in the Ba­hamas.

Michael's face lit up when his fa­ther in­ter­ject­ed, say­ing: "The tick­ets are al­ready bought, so he is on his way to the Ba­hamas al­ready."

A soft-spo­ken Michael said while he did not ex­pect to do so well in the ex­ams, he spent most of his time prepar­ing.

"I feel very hap­py, not ex­pect­ing these re­sults. I would do prac­tice pa­pers and then try to im­prove on my work.

"My dai­ly rou­tine in­clud­ed get­ting up, eat­ing and around 9 we would do a pa­per, then cor­rect it to see what I did wrong. Then in the next pa­per I would try to im­prove it," Michael said. (SR)