Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Sac­ri­fice and hard work are what top SEA stu­dent Ashaish Mo­hammed says pro­pelled his stun­ning aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess.

Ashaish, of Princes Town, was yes­ter­day named this year's top Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am (SEA) stu­dent. The 11-year-old San Fer­nan­do TML pupil beat a field of 17,270 to claim the top spot in the coun­try.�The win­ning pupil said the last year lead­ing up to the ex­am was "very chal­leng­ing and took a lot of sac­ri­fice." He will at­tend Na­pari­ma Boys' Col­lege from the new school year. With his proud par­ents at his side, Ashaish said: "A lot of breaks (free time) had to be elim­i­nat­ed; (there were) lots of late study­ing and I had set a lot of goals." He said he hoped to be­come an en­gi­neer or a lawyer. He will be re­ward­ed by his par­ents with a hol­i­day trip to Cana­da. The pupil re­ceived 100 marks in math­e­mat­ics, 99 in lan­guage arts and 19 in the es­say. His fa­ther, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, Ash­mead Mo­hammed, said: "Nor­mal­ly, I am not speech­less but this morn­ing I am."

But he man­aged to put his thoughts to­geth­er and said: "I am ec­sta­t­ic and re­al­ly, re­al­ly over­whelmed with joy. "I be­lieve all of this has to be part of my wife's and the school's ef­forts. "We have al­ways been proud of his abil­i­ty and his po­ten­tial and we al­ways knew he had the ca­pac­i­ty to do it and to­day is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of it." Mo­hammed's moth­er Vidya Ra­manand-Mo­hammed was over­come with tears when school prin­ci­pal Camille Ho­sein an­nounced that Ashaish had topped the na­tion. Ra­manand-Mo­hammed said: "The last year has been hec­tic but the school has done so much that it was just fol­low­ing through and con­tin­u­ing at home and he was well pre­pared." The beam­ing moth­er added: "We ex­pect­ed him to do great but this... I am shocked."

Priyan­ka Kissoon­s­ingh, of St Pe­ter's Pri­vate Pri­ma­ry School, Pointe-a-Pierre, placed sec­ond in the SEA, with third place be­ing tak­en by Charisse Alexan­der, of San Fer­nan­do Girls' Gov­ern­ment. Priyan­ka, who passed for Na­pari­ma Girls' High School, said she wants to be­come a pae­di­atric neu­rol­o­gist. She said she did not ex­pect her top plac­ing. She added: "The hard work led to (my suc­cess.) I put (every­thing) in­to my stud­ies and my teach­ers did very good in teach­ing me. I feel very hap­py and proud of my­self." Charisse said she, too, nev­er ex­pect­ed do­ing so well in the ex­am. She cred­it­ed her suc­cess to her moth­er Car­ol. Charisse said: "I was very hap­py when I found out that I was top­ping the school and came third. I thank my mom...she re­al­ly pushed me, and my lessons teach­ers, and Almighty God."

She quipped: "I am look­ing for­ward to my lap­top." That was a ref­er­ence to the Gov­ern­ment's promise to give a com­put­er to each new sec­ondary school stu­dent. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh vis­it­ed the three stu­dents at their re­spec­tive schools yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to con­grat­u­late them. Gopeesingh urged the stu­dents to con­tin­ue to aim high and work hard to achieve their goals. The min­is­ter al­so ad­vised par­ents to en­sure that their chil­dren main­tain a healthy di­et.

Yes­ter­day's achieve­ment is San Fer­nan­do TML's third top spot in re­cent years. Prin­ci­pal Ho­sein at­trib­uted the suc­cess­es to hard work by teach­ers. She said that from his first year, Ashaish demon­strat­ed the abil­i­ty to achieve. She said: "Ashaish has al­ways ex­celled. He was fo­cused and he per­se­vered. He is a pleas­ant child. He has rep­re­sent­ed the school (in com­pe­ti­tions). "Ashaish has been a true ex­em­plar and re­ceived the prin­ci­pal's tro­phy at our grad­u­a­tion so it has come as no sur­prise that he has done well." As for Ashaish, he said his teacher Shafi­at Shorab had faith in him.