Shal­iza Has­sanali

Ki­ran Ram­roop, 17, and his 12-year-old sis­ter Ar­ti have cre­at­ed his­to­ry in T&T for the 2011 Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) and Gen­er­al Cer­tifi­cate of Ed­u­ca­tion (GCE) ex­am­i­na­tions. To­geth­er they ob­tained 17 sub­jects, nine of which are dis­tinc­tions. The sib­lings, stu­dents of North East­ern Col­lege in San­gre Grande, were record­ed as the school's top achiev­ers in its 50 years of ex­is­tence. Ki­ran was suc­cess­ful in 14 CSEC and one GCE sub­ject, which he wrote in May, while Ar­ti, who will be en­ter­ing Form Two in Sep­tem­ber, cap­tured Grade One in Eng­lish and a dis­tinc­tion in math, af­ter writ­ing the ex­ams pri­vate­ly.

Of the 14 CSEC sub­jects Ki­ran sat, he re­ceived dis­tinc­tions in math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish A, agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence, chem­istry, hu­man and so­cial bi­ol­o­gy, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, physics and prin­ci­ples of busi­ness ad­min­is­tered by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC), while land­ing him­self Grade One in bi­ol­o­gy, elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic tech­nol­o­gy, ge­og­ra­phy, so­cial stud­ies and Grade Two in mu­sic and vi­su­al arts. He al­so ob­tained an A in ad­di­tion­al math­e­mat­ics in the GCE ex­am, which he at­tempt­ed pri­vate­ly. On­ly one oth­er stu­dent from Guyana was able to ob­tain this feat in 2009.

Bask­ing in the glo­ry of their suc­cess, the elat­ed duo who heaped prais­es on God, par­ents Ang­ie and Ku­mar Ram­roop, prin­ci­pal Vish­nu Sie­u­nar­ine and teach­ers, ex­pressed re­lief stat­ing that their hard work and sac­ri­fices had fi­nal­ly paid off. Ram­roop (Ku­mar), an O' Lev­el maths and add maths teacher at North East­ern Col­lege for sev­er­al years, said he was not sur­prised by the re­sults, not­ing that the fam­i­ly and teach­ers worked as a team to get the job done. In ad­di­tion to be­ing aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined, Ki­ran and Ar­ti can play the tenor pan, key­board, har­mo­ni­um, dho­lak, gui­tar, dhan­tal and tabla. They are al­so heav­i­ly in­volved in sports, cul­tur­al pro­grammes and vol­un­teer work, while they serve as a men­tor and per­fect role mod­el to oth­er chil­dren.

At the school's an­nu­al achieve­ment's day last month, Ki­ran walked away with the li­on's share of awards, cap­tur­ing 12. In 2008, Ki­ran, then a Form Two stu­dent, chal­lenged him­self by writ­ing four CXC sub­jects pri­vate­ly, which he passed. Go­ing be­yond the re­quired sev­en to nine O'Lev­el sub­ject lim­i­ta­tion, Ki­ran put him­self to the test again in May. "Many doubt­ed that I could do it, oth­ers dis­suad­ed me say­ing it was too much, but I didn't back down. I proved them wrong," said Ki­ran, who wants to pur­sue com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing but has his heart set on fol­low­ing in his fa­ther's foot­steps. Ar­ti on the oth­er hand was en­cour­aged by her broth­er to give the ex­ams a shot. Ar­ti feels if she can do this, oth­ers can.

The ex­cep­tion­al­ly in­tel­li­gent sib­lings live with the mot­to: "Noth­ing in life is im­pos­si­ble." The teach­ers and school, Sie­u­nar­ine ex­plained, fa­cil­i­tat­ed Ki­ran by al­low­ing him to do some of his School Based As­sess­ment out­side of his nor­mal time ta­ble. In or­der for Ki­ran to write the 14 sub­jects, he had to be ad­vised by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's le­gal de­part­ment. "They told me that it was my pre­rog­a­tive to al­low Ki­ran to write the sub­jects out of the nor­mal spec­trum of the class that he was as­signed to." Sie­u­nar­ine said he did not hes­i­tate. "We are very proud to­day. I think we have cre­at­ed his­to­ry in Trinidad and To­ba­go."