Top learners rewarded for excellence
Tessa Mancienne, Sadsitha Lokuge and Paul Gedeon feature among the top 10 award winners in the world for the November 2015 Cambridge exam series.
Students who have excelled in their CIE IGCSE, AS and A-Level examinations in October and November 2015 were rewarded during a short ceremony held yesterday at the Seychelles Institute for Teacher Education.
From 40 awards, there were 22 award winners from five different schools.
Among them, three learners have achieved the highest marks in the world and they are Tessa Mancienne from Independent School who came out third for IGCSE English as a second language, while for A-Level computing Sadsitha Lokuge took second place and Paul Gedeon was ranked eighth.
Sadsitha and Paul also came out first and second respectively for best across three Cambridge A-Levels.
The other categories include those who received the top rankings in country, for high achievers and for the best across a different number of Cambridge IGCSEs and A-Levels subjects.
Addressing the awardees, the director general for the Centre for Certification, Assessment and Teacher Support (CCATS) Dr Odile De Comarmond said: “I hope that your achievements at this point in your lives, remain a source of motivation not only for yourselves, but that this also becomes an inspiration for other students and youths around you, especially those faced with tough challenges in their lives.”
She also extended her warmest congratulations to the award recipients, their parents, teachers, and schools.
In his address, the Cambridge regional director for sub-Saharan Africa Juan Visser said they are proud to work with over 10,000 schools across the world to prepare students with the knowledge and skills they need to do well in the future.
“Our programmes set a global standard for international education and are widely recognised by universities and employers,” he said.
He noted that events like this one are very important for Cambridge because students are at the heart of everything they do.
Each awardee received a certificate and a token from Cambridge.
S5 student Tessa said: “I was surprised because I did not expect to get such a high ranking, but I’m also proud that my hard work has paid off and I hope that I can do the same this year and get better results for the rest of my IGCSEs.”
This year she will be doing her exams for mathematics, biology, computing, chemistry, physics, history, geography and first language English.
Paul and Sadsitha who were studying computing, physics, maths and chemistry at the School of Advanced Level Studies (Sals) agreed that chemistry was the hardest.
Paul said he was not expecting an award for computing as it is a particularly tough subject.
He said for him it was about balancing my studies and relaxing, because what most people do is try to cram as much as possible and study for four hours straight and stop doing certain activities.
“I studied for a short while then I relaxed, I kept on doing my sports, my karate, and going to the gym even during the exams because I find it’s important to get away from the academic stuff for a while or else you become too stressed,” he said.
Sadsitha said “It is important to know what you are studying and what your syllabus entails and furthermore not to only rely on your teachers so that you become an independent learner.”
Sadsitha hopes to study engineering at a university in France and is currently following an internship as an electrical technician at the Public Utilities Corporation (PUC).
“I’m learning so many new things and it’s good because at Sals we learned about mostly theories and now I get to apply some of those things during my internship,” he said.
Present during the ceremony were principal secretaries, key officials of the ministry, teachers and parents.
The three top achievers from Seychelles – (above) Tessa Mancienne, Sadsitha Lokuge and (below) Paul Gedeon receiving their certificate from Merida Delcy, principal secretary for early childhood, primary and secondary education
Source : Seychelles NATION