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Arapaima Primary girl is Region Nine’s top NGSA performer – already anticipates good performance at CSEC
Akima Demetro in the embrace of her proud mother Arlene D’Aguiar
With 536 marks gained at the 2016 National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), 11-year-old Akima Demetro, of Arapaima Primary School, has claimed the status of Regional Top Performer for Region Nine. She has essentially claimed a place at The Bishops’ High School.
She credits her success to her parents Arlene and Gormain D’Aguiar. Her mother was especially helpful, since she was Demetro’s Grade Six teacher. The other teachers of the school were also supportive.
According to Demetro, her Head Teacher, Miss Mary Torres, “really encouraged me a lot. Sometimes I felt I wanted to give up but she encouraged me…she encouraged all of the children.”
The quiet spoken top performer noted that while her teachers were very dedicated in their tutoring tasks, she was very aware that there was a shortage of teachers at her school. “The school’s (pupil) population is very big,” said Demetro.
This publication understands that the school has a pupil population of 340 with a complement of 12 teachers. A class size reportedly contains about 33 pupils and there are days when that can double, according to ‘Miss’ D’ Aguiar, who has been teaching at the school since 2009.
She disclosed that another challenge at the school is a language barrier. This, she said, is due to the fact that some of the pupils are migrants from Brazil, who also have to be taught to speak English in order to perform well.
“It is a multi-cultural school, and it is a challenge, because we have to cope with them in one environment,” said ‘Miss’ D’Aguiar, who has been teaching the Grade Six class for the past three years. She divulged that the second best performer of the school this year was in fact a pupil who came from Brazil and had joined at Grade Four.
Nine pupils from the school are eligible to attend Sixth Form schools – one at The Bishops’ High, two at Saint Stanislaus College, and six at President’s College.
According to ‘Miss’ D’Aguiar, while she is elated that her daughter was able to top the region, she was at no point biased in her teaching role.
“I told all of my pupils, including my daughter, whatever you work for that is what you will get…you wouldn’t get what you didn’t work for.”
Demetro and her classmates were among the 14,386 candidates who participated in the NGSA this year. They, as in previous years, were assessed in the four subject areas of Mathematics, English Language, Science and Social Studies.
According to Demetro, an aspiring medical doctor, she believes her performance was best in Social Studies. She, like a number of other candidates, revealed that the most difficult assessment paper was Mathematics Paper Two.
Although she is a little disappointed that she fell short by a mere five marks to attend the country’s premier secondary institution, Queen’s College, Demetro said that she is satisfied that she has secured a placement at another prestigious school.
But a decision is yet to be made whether she will attend The Bishops’ High School. According to the lass, she is also considering attending St Ignatius Secondary School in her Region. And the plausible reason she offered is that “it is not easy for children to cope sometimes away from home.” She is also worried about the arrangements her parents will have to make for her to attend the Georgetown school.
However, regardless of which school she attends, the ambitious Demetro said that she plans to continue to work hard and hopes to gain laudable recognition when she participates in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination.
She is hopeful too that her NGSA performance would help to inspire her two younger brothers, especially one who recently completed the National Grade Two Assessment (NGTA). Her advice to her brother is to do exactly what she did, “trust in God, be confident, and believe in yourself. I would also say to him to get as much help as you can with the Maths, because it was very difficult.”
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