KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Study­ing hard is a main in­gre­di­ent in ac­ing ex­am­i­na­tions. How­ev­er, top-ranked 2023 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) stu­dent Mi­la Zoro says hav­ing the prop­er sup­port and find­ing the right study/recre­ation bal­ance is crit­i­cal.

The Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School (NGHS) stu­dent re­ceived no­ti­fi­ca­tion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) last Wednes­day that her 258.41 SEA Com­pos­ite Stan­dard Score was the best in the land. It came af­ter her par­ents filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quest. Al­though math­e­mat­ics was nev­er her favourite class, she scored 97.33, 100 in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts and 20/20 in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, she ad­vised par­ents not to over­bur­den their chil­dren with ex­tra lessons.

“You can do two or maybe one set of ses­sions per week. That would work well, es­pe­cial­ly since these are still re­al­ly young kids. You can­not pres­sure them too much be­cause that is just not go­ing to work for any­body,” Mi­la told Guardian Me­dia at her Pe­nal home.

In 2020, Mi­la lost her grand­moth­er, Ophe­lia Ram­nar­ine Singh, which left her grand­fa­ther, De­o­nanan Ram­nar­ine Singh, alone dur­ing COVID-19.

In 2022, her fam­i­ly moved in with De­o­nanan, which meant she had to leave TML Pri­ma­ry School, St Joseph. De­spite get­ting in­to TML Pri­ma­ry School, San Fer­nan­do, Mi­la was wor­ried about not know­ing any­one there. She, how­ev­er, found a new sup­port net­work with teacher Ra­bia Mo­hammed, who drilled her on past pa­pers, and friends who formed a study group.

De­spite be­liev­ing she would pass for NGHS, she was not con­fi­dent of be­ing among the top SEA per­form­ers.

“I knew I would pass if I had the right re­sources, but I nev­er would have thought I would get the first in my school, let alone the coun­try.”

She re­called sit­ting at her or­tho­don­tic ap­point­ment in San Fer­nan­do with her moth­er, Mau­ri­ca Ram­nar­ine Singh-Zoro, last Wednes­day, when some­one from the MoE called say­ing they would re­lease the in­for­ma­tion. She be­came ec­sta­t­ic as the email came, show­ing her top rank.

“We were hap­py, but there were oth­er peo­ple in the wait­ing room, so we re­al­ly could not do any­thing, so I was just in my seat wait­ing for it and then when it came, I was re­al­ly hap­py, but I could not ex­press it be­cause peo­ple were al­ready look­ing at us,” Mi­la re­called.

Mi­la has so far loved her time at NGHS, prais­ing the teach­ers and find­ing class­es not as dif­fi­cult as she an­tic­i­pat­ed. She be­lieves fam­i­ly, rel­a­tives and friends prayed for her to suc­ceed, which drove her to make them proud. She al­ready has plans to be­come a doc­tor.

Ram­nar­ine Singh-Zoro, an at­tor­ney, said school of­fi­cials had in­formed her of the min­istry’s de­ci­sion to stop an­nounc­ing the ranks of stu­dents, un­like in pre­vi­ous years. They ad­vised her that to ob­tain the in­for­ma­tion, they could file a FOIA re­quest.

Ram­nar­ine Singh-Zoro said Mi­la’s com­pos­ite score was high, and they thought it was among the best in the coun­try.

“I would have sent it to the FOIA in Ju­ly, and last week, they would have re­spond­ed to say the rank for Mi­la was num­ber one. Of course, we were not in shock be­cause we knew she had done well, but to have num­ber one was just over the top,” Ram­nar­ine Singh-Zoro said.

Mi­la’s fa­ther, Ra­jesh Zoro, an elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer, be­lieves the min­istry should re­sume an­nounc­ing the top SEA per­form­ers, say­ing it push­es pupils to­wards more ac­com­plish­ments and serves as mo­ti­va­tion for younger pupils.

“Why take that away from the most ba­sic lev­el of achieve­ment? We still have the na­tion­al awards, for in­stance,” Zoro said.

San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School act­ing prin­ci­pal Wahi­da Mo­hammed-Nar­ine con­grat­u­lat­ed Mi­la for her out­stand­ing per­for­mance and thanked those who con­tributed to her suc­cess, in­clud­ing teach­ers and par­ents.

“To­day, we recog­nise all our SEA stu­dents, both present and past, for their ef­forts in be­ing the best ver­sion of them­selves. They have en­dured to cul­ti­vate with­in them a high lev­el of ex­cel­lence and have brought fame and glo­ry to this no­ble in­sti­tu­tion for the past 70 years,” Mo­hammed-Nar­ine said.