Ruqayyah Scott

We were all at this junc­ture at some point in our lives, and I re­call the ex­treme “pres­sure” that I ex­pe­ri­enced to pass for my first choice. As life would have it, I passed for my sec­ond choice.

On re­ceiv­ing the re­sult, all the anx­i­ety I ex­pe­ri­enced height­ened, and my heart sank, as all my best friends were go­ing to go to their first choic­es. I felt as if I dis­ap­point­ed every­one, my­self, my par­ents, my friends and my fam­i­ly mem­bers. I still re­mem­ber, fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends telling my par­ents that they should seek a trans­fer. My par­ents asked me, do you want a trans­fer? At that mo­ment, I said NO…firm­ly…I said I passed for this school for a rea­son, and this was where I was meant to be.

So said, so done! The best sev­en years, filled with mem­o­rable friend­ships, lessons and growth. An in­sti­tu­tion that has af­ford­ed me so many op­por­tu­ni­ties, nur­tured my aca­d­e­m­ic cu­rios­i­ty, sup­port­ed me in my var­i­ous ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, an in­sti­tu­tion that trained me so well, that I was able to bring home the 1 st ever Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship in my fam­i­ly!

The Sec­ondary Ex­am­i­na­tion As­sess­ment (SEA), like any oth­er ex­am, is chal­leng­ing and can be very daunt­ing for your chil­dren. It is im­por­tant that par­ents rec­og­nize that their chil­dren are al­ready fac­ing a lot of pres­sure in or­der to pass for what our so­ci­ety deems a “good school”. While that de­sire is not a bad one, we must al­ways re­mem­ber that:

SEA is not the be­gin­ning or end of the world. Most of your chil­dren who are writ­ing this ex­am are any­where be­tween 10 and 13 years old. They have their en­tire lives ahead of them to craft the lives they are de­sirous of liv­ing to tru­ly be suc­cess­ful and make you proud.

I would love to say, it doesn’t mat­ter what school a stu­dent pass­es for, they all have the same op­por­tu­ni­ties. But the re­al­i­ty is, this is far from the truth. Let’s imag­ine if all sec­ondary schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go were eq­ui­tably equipped, with an abun­dance of op­por­tu­ni­ties, ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture and fi­nances, es­sen­tial­ly if all schools were equal, would you even care about which school your son/daugh­ter passed for?

My mes­sage here is this, our so­ci­ety has cre­at­ed this pres­tige/non-pres­tige school cul­ture and a lot of the time, it’s the par­ents who hold on­to these ideals much more than the stu­dents them­selves, be­cause at the end of the day…most of us end up in the same uni­ver­si­ty, in the same class­room, strug­gling the same ex­act way re­gard­less of which high school we at­tend­ed.

My re­quest is sim­ple; we all end up where we are meant to be! With just a few days left for the ex­am, there isn’t much more your son or daugh­ter can study at this stage to make them mirac­u­lous­ly ex­cep­tion­al at the ex­am, so cut them some slack, treat them to ice cream this af­ter­noon, make their favourite meal, and let them go to sleep rather than stay­ing up all night study­ing.

Re­as­sure them of your love and sup­port no mat­ter what the out­come of ex­ams and em­pha­sise that this is not the be-all and end-all for them.

WE wish the na­tion’s stu­dents writ­ing the SEA to re­mem­ber: You are more than ca­pa­ble of ac­com­plish­ing any­thing you could ever imag­ine!