SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Girls took the top six places in this year’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tions.

And al­though the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic shut down the usu­al re­sult-day cel­e­bra­tions at schools around the coun­try yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion ho­n­oured 11 stu­dents in a spe­cial cer­e­mo­ny at its Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters. The stu­dents were giv­en lap­tops and de­vices, along with in­ter­net pack­ages from Uni­com­er, Bmo­bile and the min­istry dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.

San Fer­nan­do TML’s Ameer­ah Beekhoo placed first na­tion­wide while An­janaa Dan, from Trinidad Re­nais­sance Prep in San Fer­nan­do, placed sec­ond and Sush­mi­ta Ram­sawak, of Gand­hi Memo­r­i­al Vedic School in Aranguez, San Juan, was third.

The na­tion’s top male stu­dent Vi­neet Ram­sar­ran, from Eniath’s Prepara­to­ry, who placed sev­enth na­tion­wide, was al­so award­ed.

The top two per­form­ers from spe­cial needs schools, Mat­tia Street, from the Cas­cade School for Deaf and Jor­dan Thorne, from Au­drey Jef­fers School for Deaf, were al­so award­ed.

The min­istry al­so se­lect­ed five stu­dents from schools around the coun­try who were on aca­d­e­m­ic watch: Shani­ra Beek­bakhee (St He­le­na Hin­du), Adri­an­na Kerr (Mor­vant New Gov­ern­ment), Elisea King (Cumaca RC), Princess Ram­lal (Siparia RC) and Jew­el Vaugh­ans (Fifth Com­pa­ny AC).

“This year’s recog­ni­tion of the out­stand­ing per­for­mance of our SEA 2020 co­hort re­flects the in­clu­sive vi­sion 2030 so­ci­ety we strive to build,” Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.

She said the over­all per­for­mance of stu­dents had al­so im­proved when com­pared to the 2019 re­sults.

“Many of our stu­dents used the time wise­ly that was be­tween when they were sup­posed to write the ex­am and when they ac­tu­al­ly wrote the ex­am. These ex­ams were sup­posed to be writ­ten in March, it was writ­ten in Au­gust, we know that many schools made very good use of the time, many stu­dents were able to go over and over and yes we ex­pect­ed there would have been an in­crease in per­for­mance, the cur­ricu­lum did not change but there was a lot more time for some stu­dents to re­al­ly nar­row in, ze­ro down and get in­to their work,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry will al­so again con­sid­er calls to have SEA abol­ished but the na­tion will have to weigh in on what should re­place the ex­am. She said con­sul­ta­tions were done in 2016 on re­mov­ing the ex­am but the re­sults showed the ma­jor­i­ty of stake­hold­ers were not in favour of re­mov­ing it.

“We have to de­cide as a coun­try what we want to move for­ward with. You hear voic­es say­ing re­move the SEA but what came out of the 2016 con­sul­ta­tion was not that, so at this point, you have to ex­am­ine it again, do we want to re­move the SEA and what do we want to re­place it with?” she asked.

Long, hard jour­ney

for top stu­dents

The na­tion’s top-per­form­ing 2020 SEA stu­dent, Ameer­ah Beekhoo, yes­ter­day de­scribed the jour­ney to writ­ing the ex­am as frus­trat­ing.

Beekhoo said her biggest chal­lenge ahead of the ex­am, which was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for April but was post­poned un­til Au­gust be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, was the con­stant need to keep study­ing be­cause of the shift­ing ex­am dates.

How­ev­er, she said she found a sil­ver lin­ing to the months of prepa­ra­tion.

“It paid off in the end be­cause the ex­tra time helped me per­fect some ar­eas and learn new things that I might not have known be­fore,” Beekhoo told Guardian Me­dia af­ter col­lect­ing an award at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Both of her par­ents are doc­tors and her moth­er, Dr Shari Khan, said an im­por­tant step in prepar­ing Beekhoo for the ex­am was know­ing when to stop.

“It’s hard to see your chil­dren put so much ef­fort in­to a fi­nal date for an ex­am and then find out it was can­celled and we didn’t know when it would be…we went the way of say­ing let’s stop every­thing and re­lax and then we start­ed back very slow­ly with a lot of phys­i­cal out­door ac­tiv­i­ties in our yard just to keep her oc­cu­pied so she doesn’t get frus­trat­ed.”

Khan said the ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties Beekhoo par­tic­i­pat­ed in helped her to re­lease frus­tra­tion and anx­i­ety over the ex­am.

She had this ad­vice for par­ents who want their chil­dren to suc­ceed: “Keep by the side of your chil­dren, don’t leave them un­su­per­vised if you can help it. When you come home from work, go through what they have done dur­ing the day, spend some time with them but it is al­so im­por­tant to spend some care­free time with them.”

Beekhoo’s fa­ther, Dr Nichol­son Beekhoo, de­scribed the prepa­ra­tion for the ex­am as a roller coast­er ride and said he was ex­treme­ly proud of his daugh­ter.

Sec­ond place stu­dent An­jan­na Dan said she was sur­prised by the re­sults.

“I am ex­cit­ed, I knew I would do what I want­ed to do but I didn’t know I would come on top of the coun­try like this,” Dan said.

Her fa­ther Dilip Dan al­so called for par­ents to al­low chil­dren more recre­ation­al time to help them fo­cus on their ed­u­ca­tion.

Dan said the se­cret to his daugh­ter’s suc­cess was no ex­tra lessons.

“I think if you pro­vide what is nec­es­sary and you al­low this child to have the ex­tra cur­ricu­lum ac­tiv­i­ties, like swim­ming, danc­ing, mu­sic, they help the child to fo­cus, hence no need to do any­thing ex­tra in terms of lessons,” he said.

Third place stu­dent Sush­mi­ta Ram­sawak al­so ex­pressed sur­prise at her re­sults. Ram­sawak said she had doubts that she had passed the ex­am af­ter writ­ing it.

“I wasn’t re­al­ly ex­pect­ing to pass for my first choice, I thought I did re­al­ly bad­ly but ap­par­ent­ly I didn’t,” she said.