Eleven-year-old Seyshelly Dun­can didn’t ex­pect to be the top  SEA per­former in To­ba­go.

She says she was on­ly try­ing to do well.

“I felt shocked, sur­prised and elat­ed, the fact that I had just topped SEA To­ba­go,” she said calm­ly, seat­ed be­tween her proud par­ents, Dex­ter Dun­can and Leslie No­ray-Dun­can, in the fam­i­ly’s Sig­nal Hill home.

The Sig­nal Hill Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School pupil placed first in To­ba­go in the 2025 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion. Her suc­cess, her par­ents said yes­ter­day, is the prod­uct of ear­ly struc­ture, dai­ly re­view, and sup­port, but al­so free­dom. Free­dom to play. To cre­ate. To breathe.

“Every day, when she gets home, we will give her the time to play, to eat and set­tle her­self and then we had fixed times that we will start her re­view,” her moth­er, Leslie No­ray-Dun­can, ex­plained.

It’s a rhythm they start­ed from in­fan­cy and one they kept right up to Stan­dard Three. Af­ter that, her par­ents said, Seyshelly didn’t need re­minders. Study­ing had be­come a habit. But it was nev­er her whole world.

Her fa­ther, Dex­ter Dun­can, said bal­ance was key.

“Bal­ance caused us to re­alise that she can­not al­ways be in­volved in aca­d­e­mics. She need­ed, you know, out­lets. And so we had it among our­selves, my wife and I, we took it up­on our­selves to go hik­ing about the coun­try,” he said.

Out­side of class and cor­rec­tions, Seyshelly is an artist with a fast hand and a full imag­i­na­tion. 

Giv­en a blank page, she com­plet­ed a live sketch in five min­utes dur­ing the in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

She’s al­so a steel­pan play­er. For her, mu­sic isn’t a dis­trac­tion from school, it’s part of how she stays ground­ed.

“My hob­bies are main­ly play­ing the na­tion­al in­stru­ment … play­ing games with friends,” she said with a soft smile.

But her jour­ney to first place didn’t come by tal­ent alone.

Her par­ents—both deeply in­volved in her dai­ly rou­tine—said dis­ci­pline was mod­elled and nur­tured, not forced. They start­ed each day with de­vo­tion and taught her to lean on faith dur­ing stress­ful mo­ments.

“We worked hard, and we trust­ed God, and it’s good to know that Seyshelly is of like mind where that is con­cerned,” her fa­ther said. “Oh, I’m hum­bled. I’m proud to the point of be­ing hum­bled.”

For her part, Seyshelly sees her next chal­lenge as just an­oth­er chap­ter in a well-bal­anced life. She’s head­ed to Bish­op’s High School and al­ready has her sights set on study­ing med­i­cine.

“I want to be­come a med­ical sur­geon when I get old­er,” she said.

When asked why, her an­swer was sim­ple: “So I could help peo­ple.”