Top per­form­ers from San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School re­ceived tro­phies as they cel­e­brat­ed suc­cess in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tions yes­ter­day. 

And al­though the school did not make it in­to the top three places this year, the school’s most out­stand­ing pupil, Kayleb Ma­hara­jh, was laud­ed. Ma­hara­jh scored 100 per cent in all sub­ject ar­eas ex­cept for Com­po­si­tion, where he scored 19 out of 20.

Hug­ging his teary-eyed moth­er Fa­dia Mo­hammed, Kayleb said his re­sult was un­ex­pect­ed.

“I didn’t ex­pect to top the school. I want to thank my par­ents, my teach­ers and my prin­ci­pal, as well as God, who had the biggest part to play in all of this,” Kayleb said.

With the re­sults in, the ex­u­ber­ant stu­dent said he was look­ing for­ward to play­ing video games with his friends.

Fa­dia said her son had been work­ing con­sis­tent­ly for five years.

“Words can’t de­scribe how I feel. I know the hard work he put in. This re­sult was long in com­ing. Be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, the home be­came a school and his out­let was re­al­ly his fam­i­ly. My dad used to talk to him a lot and play­ing on­line with his friends,” she added.

Prin­ci­pal Wahi­da Mo­hammed-Nar­ine con­grat­u­lat­ed the top stu­dents, say­ing it was a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort that re­sult­ed in ex­cep­tion­al re­sults.

She said stu­dents were giv­en sup­port to deal with the pres­sures of the pan­dem­ic.

“We have a guid­ance coun­sel­lor and a spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer at­tached to the school for the first time. We al­so have stu­dent aides. One of the things we look at is to en­sure that no stu­dent is left be­hind. We had 51 out of 66 stu­dents pass­ing for top schools. Our Google Class­room worked well and all stu­dents worked well and were very well en­gaged. All stu­dents did well,” Mo­hammed-Nar­ine said.

Among the stu­dents re­ceiv­ing tro­phies were Aidan Boo­choon, Jay­lon Pe­dro, Maya Ram­nar­ine, Veer Dabideen, Shreya Chit­ta, Ethan Bose, Stef­fi Seep­er­sad, Saif Amin, Aditya Um­raw and Ibra­heem Baksh.

Mean­while, at Cedar Grove Pri­vate school, prin­ci­pal Sha­heed Al­la­ham said, “Our re­sults were ex­cep­tion­al, even bet­ter than last year.”

He said 22 pupils wrote the ex­am and 18 passed for their first choice. Sev­en of them passed for Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School, three for Na­pari­ma Col­lege, two for Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, two for St Joseph’s Con­vent and the oth­ers for Par­vati Girls’ High school and one for La Ro­maine Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary.

Al­la­ham praised the teach­ers and the par­ents for sup­port­ing the chil­dren, say­ing the pan­dem­ic had posed chal­lenges that stu­dents had suc­cess­ful­ly over­come.

Par­ent Yu­bery Bar­boza said she was pleased with the per­for­mance of her son William.

“I am very hap­py. They had a rough time this year with the pan­dem­ic but they over­came the chal­lenges,” she said.

At Debe Hin­du School, prin­ci­pal Usha Ram­per­sad-Gookool al­so cel­e­brat­ed, say­ing three stu­dents had se­cured 100 per cent at the Math­e­mat­ics ex­ams. Most stu­dents had passed for their first choice.

Ram­per­sad-Gokool said it took the school one year to arrange de­vices for all stu­dents.

She al­so praised par­ents and teach­ers for their com­mit­ment.