Casan­dra Thomp­son�Forbes

Guyana na­tion­al De­bra Am­a­ta has topped the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion in To­ba­go.The 12-year-old Sig­nal Hill Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School stu­dent moved to To­ba­go in 2014 with her par­ents, who are both med­ical doc­tors at­tached to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.A very out­spo­ken De­bra scored 238.298 points and told the me­dia her suc­cess was due to her spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, par­ents and teach­ers

"I prayed, I thanked the Lord for his many mer­cies and I thank my teach­ers for prepar­ing me. My par­ents al­so al­lowed me to do ex­tra cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties. I did ten­nis, gym­nas­tics, foot­ball. I read a lot of books and I went to Bible study," she said.Her moth­er, Dr Vivi­enne Am­a­ta, said her daugh­ter was a well-round­ed stu­dent and she was very proud of her achieve­ments. She al­so had a word of ad­vice for par­ents:

"I am ec­sta­t­ic. She was very con­sis­tent, very dis­ci­plined, she worked every day but she was al­so on the school's foot­ball team, gym­nas­tics and she played ten­nis so she had a ball, she en­joyed her­self. Let the chil­dren en­joy them­selves... they are still chil­dren and this is just the foun­da­tion."SEA teacher Ms Roberts said Am­a­ta was a dili­gent and self-mo­ti­vat­ed stu­dent and the re­sult was no sur­prise to the staff.

"There are no words to ex­press how I feel. I'm elat­ed, I'm over­joyed and I am ex­treme­ly thank­ful," Roberts said.The sec­ond placed stu­dent was 11-year-old Shane Teles­ford, of the St Nicholas Pri­vate Pri­ma­ry School, while third place was J'da Nicome, 12, from Scar­bor­ough RC.The top three stu­dents all passed for their first choice Bish­op's High School.

Speak­ing to the me­dia yes­ter­day, THA Sec­re­tary for Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth Af­fairs and Sport, Huey Cadette, said To­ba­go scored bet­ter at this year's ex­am­i­na­tion.He said the num­ber of stu­dents scor­ing above 90 per cent slight­ly in­creased this year. He added there was al­so a re­mark­able de­crease in the num­ber of stu­dents scor­ing in the 30 per­centile range and un­der.He said no stu­dent who wrote this year's ex­am­i­na­tion would be re­quired to re­sit next year.

Some 836 stu­dents sat the ex­am in To­ba­go this year.