Sascha Wil­son

While the pan­dem­ic has caused some chal­lenges in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, 17-year-old Za­y­den Ramkissoon saw it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue his aca­d­e­m­ic goals and has churned out re­mark­able re­sults.

Za­y­den Ramkissoon, 17, a stu­dent of Na­pari­ma Col­lege, signed up for the Cam­bridge A-Lev­el ex­am­i­na­tion months be­fore he was due to write the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tions dur­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2021/2022.

He stud­ied for both ex­am­i­na­tions si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly and now he has 10 O’Lev­el sub­jects, with eight dis­tinc­tions un­der his belt as well as a Grade A in Math­e­mat­ics, a Grade A in Physics and a Grade C in Fur­ther Math­e­mat­ics.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at his Gran Cou­va home, Za­y­den ex­plained how on­line school­ing gave him the ad­di­tion­al time he need­ed to study.

He said, “On­line class­es def­i­nite­ly have their ben­e­fits and their dis­ad­van­tages name­ly you don’t have to com­mute so that saves a lot of time and you could use that to do oth­er things.”

Za­y­den al­so re­lied on the in­ter­net to help him pre­pare for his Cam­bridge ex­ams, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Math­e­mat­ics sub­jects.

“There are lots of re­sources on the in­ter­net name­ly YouTube and many web­sites and you can watch videos and there are lots of ar­ti­cles on every­thing you could pos­si­bly have ques­tions on. That’s a thing peo­ple very much over­looked. They don’t re­al­ize that you can just google a lot of in­for­ma­tion. it there, it’s free,” he said.

Ex­plain­ing why he chose to pur­sue two ma­jor ex­ams con­cur­rent­ly, he said, “I had want­ed to do the Cam­bridge A lev­els be­cause I saw it as a good chal­lenge and a good achieve­ment to have and there are many ad­van­tages as well. It is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised and it is al­so hard­er than the lo­cal ex­am­i­na­tions CAPE so hav­ing it was a very good as­set.”

When he en­tered Form Five he asked his teacher Dev Go­sine to join the Up­per and Low­er Form Six Physics class­es and three months be­fore the Cam­bridge ex­am­i­na­tions he at­tend­ed Math­e­mat­ics class­es.

As for his fu­ture plans, Za­y­den said he would even­tu­al­ly like to at­tend ei­ther the Cam­bridge or Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ties to pur­sue me­chan­i­cal or com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing, or even ro­bot­ics, “some­thing that may be ben­e­fi­cial to not just the coun­try but maybe the whole world.”

Re­call­ing that Za­y­den was an ex­cep­tion­al stu­dent, Go­sine said, “I have been teach­ing at Na­pari­ma Col­lege for the last 35 years it takes stu­dents two years at A lev­els to get an A. This young man is now en­ter­ing A Lev­els and has an A not just in Physics in Maths and he has a C in Fur­ther Maths too and I think is re­al­ly an ex­cep­tion­al achieve­ment.”

He said Za­y­den has man­aged to turn what the rest of the world thought was a very neg­a­tive in­ci­dent in­to some­thing ex­treme­ly pos­i­tive.

“I think that is one of the lessons we could learn from this whole ex­er­cise,” he added.

Mean­while, his proud par­ents Sham and Joy Ramkissoon took lit­tle cred­it for Za­y­den’s ap­ti­tude to work and his dri­ve to ex­cel.

“Za­y­den is 200 per cent in what­ev­er it is do­ing he is not halfway he is very thor­ough and Za­y­den is ful­ly fo­cused you don’t have to tell him any­thing he knows what he is about,” said his fa­ther Sham Ram­per­sad.

His moth­er Joy Ramkissoon said they gave Za­y­den en­cour­age­ment and sup­port.

She said,

“We did not push him or force him we just gave him his space, en­cour­age­ment and love and we let him do every­thing on his own.”

|Thank­ing his par­ents, friends and teach­ers for their sup­port, Za­y­den al­so of­fered some words of ad­vice to oth­er stu­dents.

“My first piece of ad­vice would be to for­mu­late a plan you can­not do any­thing with­out hav­ing a plan and this plan en­tails gath­er­ing re­sources, brows­ing the in­ter­net. I think some­times it is re­al­ly un­der­rat­ed, how ben­e­fi­cial it can be, be­cause it is free and you can get so much in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

He al­so ad­vised that they read their text­books and go through as many past pa­pers as pos­si­ble, cor­rect what they get wrong and nev­er make the same mis­take twice.

Go­sine al­so urged ed­u­ca­tors and school ad­min­is­tra­tors to be en­ablers rather and dis­ablers.

“By this I mean we must en­cour­age stu­dents to not just dream the im­pos­si­ble but achieve the im­pos­si­ble,” he said