The top three Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) stu­dents came from dif­fer­ent schools and dif­fer­ent back­grounds, but they had one thing in com­mon - they stud­ied hard.

Top stu­dents Siri Vad­la­mu­di, 11, of Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian, Megan Ra­moutar, 11, of TML Pri­ma­ry and Man­asseh Mo­hammed, 12, of Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian, all at­tend­ed schools in South Trinidad.

In To­ba­go, Sabastien Ram­per­sad of the Buc­coo Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School placed top on the is­land and 18th over­all.

There was an at­mos­phere of ex­treme ju­bi­la­tion and pride at the schools when Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia an­nounced the re­sults at each school yes­ter­day.

The schools on­ly knew for cer­tain that they were among the top three per­form­ers when the min­is­ter and his en­tourage ar­rived at the school. Al­though the SEA for­mat was changed this year which caused con­cern to sev­er­al par­ents and teach­ers, Gar­cia said all the 18,849 who wrote the ex­am per­formed well.

Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial list is­sued by the Min­istry, the names of 17, 872 stu­dents — 8, 918 girls and 8, 954 boys —were mov­ing on to sec­ondary school. At the re­quest of par­ents the names of 100 chil­dren who were al­so as­signed to sec­ondary schools were omit­ted from the of­fi­cial list.

This means that of the 18,849 stu­dents who wrote the ex­ams 17, 972 had been as­signed to a sec­ondary school, while 877 would like­ly have to re­peat next year.

Af­ter this year’s ex­am, con­cerns had been raised by par­ents and teach­ers about changes to the Math­e­mat­ics com­po­nent of the ex­am­i­na­tion.

They com­plained that in­suf­fi­cient time was giv­en to pre­pare the chil­dren for the changes and work was too dif­fi­cult for Stan­dard 5 stu­dents. Gar­cia had said the changes were im­ple­ment­ed as a re­sult of the re­view done on the ex­am­i­na­tion every four years and as a re­sult of rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing out of the Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tions on Ed­u­ca­tion.

What’s next for the top three

Siri, Megan and Man­asseh topped the coun­try with these scores re­spec­tive­ly— 266.259, 264.999 and 262.462.

Siri who was born in In­dia is ex­cit­ed about at­tend­ing Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School. She wants to fol­low in the foot­steps of her par­ents Sridi­vasa and Sree­latha Vad­la­mu­di, who are both doc­tors, but she wants to be a car­di­ol­o­gist.

Siri was al­so last year’s win­ner of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Men­tal Math­e­mat­ics marathon. She plays Chess and trains in Taek­won­do. Asked how she felt about be­ing the top stu­dent, she said, “I feel de­light­ed. First, I have to thank God and my par­ents and my teacher Mr Lyn­don (Jute) for my suc­cess.”

She ad­vised up­com­ing SEA stu­dents to, “fo­cus on your stud­ies and be ded­i­cat­ed and don’t be stressed about any­thing.”

Her moth­er de­scribed her as a dis­ci­plined child and ded­i­cat­ed stu­dent.

They moved here when Siri was two-years-old. Siri al­so has a broth­er at­tend­ing the school.

He is in Stan­dard Four. Siri’s moth­er said her daugh­ter’s suc­cess came with a lot of sac­ri­fices. Siri had to give up most of her tele­vi­sion and play time for her stud­ies. But, the moth­er ad­vised par­ents against stress­ing their chil­dren.

Cau­tion­ing that chil­dren could eas­i­ly slip in­to a state of de­pres­sion, she re­called that the month be­fore SEA she was con­cerned about Siri and had to ask her teacher to speak to her.

School prin­ci­pal Don­na Ramjohn-Khan said they were elat­ed, es­pe­cial­ly since this year’s SEA was dif­fer­ent.

“It is a new for­mat of the ex­am and we and our con­cerns. We would’ve done some changes to our teach­ing strate­gies, we would have in­cor­po­rat­ed the par­ents and mem­bers of the cur­ricu­lum di­vi­sion and we just worked and mon­i­tored.

“Siri is an ex­cel­lent stu­dent. She has al­ways been a num­ber one stu­dent,” said Ramjohn-Khan who de­scribed her as qui­et, hum­ble and hard­work­ing. Across at TML Pri­ma­ry, the min­is­ter did not de­lay in an­nounc­ing the sec­ond place which was met with thun­der­ous ap­plause and cheers. Megan said she was elat­ed but very sur­prised. “I didn’t think it was go­ing to be me.”

When school re­opens she will be at­tend­ing St Joseph’s Con­vent, but she has not yet de­cid­ed on her ca­reer.

Her words of ad­vice to oth­er stu­dents, “Study hard and pray, al­ways pray and just be ded­i­cat­ed to your work and you will do well.”

She al­so thanked her teacher Ims­haz Ho­sein. Megan’s par­ents Troy Ra­moutar, a pro­duc­tion su­per­vi­sor, and moth­er Sharon Ra­moutar, a house­wife, said they ex­pect­ed her to do well, but were sur­prised that she made it in the top three.

Megan al­so had a hec­tic study sched­ule as she had lessons every day of the week, ex­cept Fri­days and Sun­days. She is look­ing for­ward to “just re­lax­ing” for the two-month va­ca­tion, but she hopes that her par­ents buy her an iPhone.

De­scrib­ing the prepa­ra­tion for the SEA as “very stress­ful,” her fa­ther said it took a team ef­fort. He called on the min­istry to make the SEA less de­mand­ing and stress­ful on the chil­dren.

“This year was most chal­leng­ing ever, the math­e­mat­ics por­tion of the ex­am was very dif­fi­cult, very chal­leng­ing. Some of my nephews who wrote the Form Three na­tion­al test said it was eas­i­er than SEA. Every year it is be­com­ing more chal­leng­ing for the kids.”

As Gar­cia an­nounced the third place win­ner at Canaan, Man­asseh’s fa­ther Mustapha lift­ed him in­to the air as the hall erupt­ed with screams of joy.

“I feel ex­cit­ed,” said Man­asseh who was con­fi­dent that he would have done well. Man­asseh does not be­long to any foot­ball group or club, but his pas­sion is to play foot­ball.

His favourite foot­ball team is Barcelona of Spain.

For per­form­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly well, Man­asseh said he wants his par­ents to take him to Dubai.

“We will dis­cuss it and de­cide what he wants. He said Dubai but that might be out, we had promised him Dis­ney World,” said his fa­ther, a school safe­ty of­fi­cer at Debe High School.

He cred­it­ed his son’s suc­cess to his son’s own ded­i­ca­tion, but al­so the sup­port of his moth­er Denise Mo­hammed, a trea­sury of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Fi­nance.”

He did not give up any­thing. He went his Scout meet­ings, Sun­day school and he played crick­et and foot­ball with the boys in the street, but when it came to his lessons when his moth­er reach home he had to stop all the play­ing and get down to his books. We did not starve him from any ac­tiv­i­ties.” His teacher Jen­nifer Sankar de­scribed him as a very good and fo­cussed stu­dent who lis­tened to his teacher. She said Man­asseh and his school­mates did well be­cause of the tri­an­gle of suc­cess.

“Par­ents, teacher, child and the mid­dle is suc­cess,” she said. Al­so com­plain­ing that the SEA ex­am is too stress­ful on the chil­dren and par­ents, Man­asseh’s fa­ther al­so called on the min­istry to de­vise a for­mat that would eas­i­er on every­one. Man­asseh cel­e­brat­ed with his friends at Chucky Cheese.