Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Re­bec­ca Ann Jat­tan is de­vot­ed to her church, and even though she was prepar­ing for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am in May, she nev­er missed Sun­day School at the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church. Her moth­er, Stacey, said she al­ways en­sured her on­ly child was "ground­ed in church and re­spects every­one."

Jat­tan, 11, copped the first-place ti­tle, beat­ing just over 19,000 pupils. On Fri­day, she and dozens of chil­dren who at­tend­ed the Va­ca­tion Bible School gath­ered at the church's com­pound with their par­ents to head to the eco-re­sort in Va­len­cia. Still beam­ing from her ma­jor achieve­ment, Jat­tan said she nev­er felt pres­sured and con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pat­ing in her ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.

She at­tend­ed the Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian School in Dun­can Vil­lage and scored full marks in math­e­mat­ics, cre­ative writ­ing and lan­guage arts. Jat­tan will start the new school term as a stu­dent of Na­pari­ma Girls' High School.

Bal­ance book, ac­tiv­i­ties and play­time

Proud of her ac­com­plish­ment, Jat­tan said the feel­ing was over­whelm­ing. "My mom made sure my timetable and my sched­ule were very bal­anced, so I had enough time to re­lax my­self. "I wasn't pres­sured and there wasn't too much stress," she said. One of her best friends since First Year, Leann Nar­ine, stood close by dur­ing the in­ter­view.

Nar­ine will be at­tend­ing St Joseph's Con­vent in San Fer­nan­do. Jat­tan, dressed in a red T-shirt and a pair of jeans, with red ac­ces­sories, was con­fi­dent about her aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits. She wants to study sci­ences and be­come a vet­eri­nar­i­an. She hasn't giv­en much thought about where she wants to pur­sue her ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion but says ever since she knew her­self, she al­ways loved an­i­mals.

Jat­tan has three dogs-Frisco, Sparky and Husky. Last year's win­ner, Gabrielle Mo­han, al­so has a love for an­i­mals and a sim­i­lar ca­reer in­ter­est. Jat­tan said she main­tained a bal­anced life. She said, "Some­times I would have to go to my ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties like bal­let class­es or go to church to prac­tise for the choir or Sun­day School, but I would al­ways study.

"In the morn­ing, it would be the start of a reg­u­lar school­day and on evenings, my teacher had lessons at the school and af­ter that, my mom would go through a pa­per with me de­pend­ing on what we did in school." Her ad­vice to oth­er pupils was to al­ways put God first and seek his help "be­cause he will help you." She said, "Study hard and al­ways obey your par­ents be­cause they know what's best for you, and that al­so means teach­ers and peo­ple who will give you ad­vice."

'Jat­tan is a role mod­el'

Jat­tan has been at­tend­ing Sun­day School since she was five and promised she would nev­er leave. Sun­day School su­per­in­ten­dent Jean Singh said Jat­tan was a role mod­el. She said, "She is there every sin­gle Sun­day, re­gard­less if she has lessons or not; she makes it her busi­ness to be part of the Sun­day School." Singh added that Jat­tan was unique, out­stand­ing and well-round­ed.

Her moth­er, who was in­stru­men­tal in her suc­cess, said she knew her daugh­ter would per­form well but nev­er ex­pect­ed her to be the top per­former. Stacey said, "Know­ing that she topped the coun­try is the ic­ing on the cake be­cause we know she was bright but there are so many oth­er bright chil­dren out there." She said Jat­tan would of­ten be re­ward­ed when she worked hard but was not spoilt.