An­na-Lisa Paul

The sus­pect­ed sui­cide of 13-year-old Davin­dra Boodoo, a pupil of El So­cor­ro Hin­du School, did not af­fect pupils at­tend­ing the El So­cor­ro Hin­du School. Davin­dra, who was ex­pect­ed to write yes­ter­day's Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am, was found hang­ing Wednes­day af­ter­noon at his home.Af­ter the news of the death spread ear­ly yes­ter­day, guid­ance coun­sel­lors went to the school to pro­vide sup­port to pupils who might have been af­fect­ed by his death.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh lat­er re­ferred to the in­ci­dent dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.He said while the Gov­ern­ment and coun­try were trau­ma­tised, his min­istry was com­mit­ted to find­ing a new sys­tem aimed at re­duc­ing the pres­sure faced by stu­dents about to write ex­ams.Adding that in­ci­dent would mo­ti­vate the au­thor­i­ties to act faster, he said par­ents al­so had a part to play by find­ing ways to re­duce the ten­sion placed on the shoul­ders of their chil­dren.Staff at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the ex­am across the coun­try was ex­cel­lent and with­out any prob­lems.While of­fi­cials re­port­ed no ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in yes­ter­days SEA, in the coun­ties of Ca­roni and Vic­to­ria, where some larg­er-print ex­am pa­pers had been re­quest­ed, the T&T Guardian un­der­stands those pa­pers were late in ar­riv­ing so the two pupils who need­ed them had to be giv­en ad­di­tion­al time.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cials as­sured that by 2 pm, all ex­am pa­pers had been col­lect­ed by the se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny con­tract­ed by the min­istry.

When the ex­am end­ed around 12.30 pm, pupils of the Fa­ti­ma RC School, Curepe, rushed out of the ex­am room with big smiles.Run­ning in­to his moth­er's arms, Juan Luis Guilar­ta, 12, said it was "re­al easy." Re­lieved it was over, his moth­er, Ruth Al­bor­noz, praised the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion of the teach­ers to en­sure the chil­dren were pre­pared.Over at the Holy Sav­iour An­gli­can School, Curepe, 11-year-old Jay­da Hunte said the ex­am was good and she was ex­pect­ing to do well. Her class­mate, Chelsea Lakhan, 12, ex­pressed a some­what dif­fer­ent opin­ion as she said: "The gram­mar was easy but the maths was a lit­tle tricky."Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18,039 stu­dents were set to write the ex­am yes­ter­day with re­sults to be re­leased af­ter June 20.

About Davin­dra's death

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, Davin­dra, of Sad­hoo Trace, Aranguez, was found hang­ing at the back of his home around 4.30 pm.His body was found by his younger sis­ter, Nir­mala Boodoo, 11, who was sup­posed to have sat the ex­am yes­ter­day as well but was too trau­ma­tised to do so.The younger Boodoo alert­ed her grand­fa­ther who knocked down the door to the room in which Boodoo was. The fam­i­ly had be­gan search­ing for Boodoo af­ter he went miss­ing for a while.Barataria po­lice is con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. At the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, and at the fam­i­ly's home rel­a­tives were too dis­traught to speak with mem­bers of the me­dia yes­ter­day.