…NGSA top two Venisha Lall, Dave Chowtie

WHEN the results for this year’s National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) was announced on Wednesday, two young children: Venisha Lall and Dave Chowtie emerged, equally, as the top performers out of a pool of 14, 300 candidates.

Both students succeeded after months of intense preparations geared at helping them secure the best academic performance possible. And now that this objective has been achieved, they each intend going on to do even greater things. “I want to be the future President of Guyana to help the poor people,” the bubbly Essequibo girl, Venisha Lall, said.

Lall, a student of the CV Nunes Primary School in Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), secured 532 marks out of a possible 536. When she received the news, naturally she was excited but not too surprised, since she wanted to be a top student for a number of reasons. The first reason was that she wanted to do it for herself, her parents and her teachers. She also shared that her intention was to be in the ‘Top 10,’ so that Minister of Education, Dr Nicolette Henry would visit Essequibo.

And according to her mother, Radica Lall, they all wanted to show that the “public schools” can come out on top too. Lall’s father Muneshwar Lall also said, “I feel excited to know that my daughter topped the country. Essequibo children normally don’t top the country and I am very happy about this.”

In preparation for the assessment, the young girl recounted that she spent less time on her cellphone and on the television. And the girl, who is also a prolific dancer, decided to dance less and study just a bit more in the months leading up to the April examinations. “She has always been doing excellently in school. She has never dropped below, I think, 97 per cent. She’s always active in everything, every extra-curricular activity and everything she’s just there,” her mother highlighted.

Radica even indicated that her involvement in dancing helped to “loosen” her up a bit. The young girl’s professional aspiration is to become an economist, but the greater goal is to become the President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, with a special interest in helping to eradicate poverty.

Then there’s Venisha’s counterpart, Dave Chowtie. The Graham’s Hall Primary School boy garnered 532 and shares the top position with the Essequibo girl. “I feel overjoyed. I didn’t expect this,” Dave told the Guyana Chronicle. “It was hard studying, working past papers over and over again.” The young boy related that in preparing for his examinations, he had a strong support system; his parents were there with him every step of the way, along with his teachers. And his mother Neela Chowtie, well, you could say that she was probably even more shocked than he was. While he was always a stellar performer at his school, emerging as one of the two top performers of a batch of 14,300 students was definitely a whole different ball game for Neela.

“It was a lot of hard work and I think that it has paid off,” she said, adding: “We have to continue working with him and guiding him in whatever he wants to do.” Even his teacher, Edna Daniels— who taught him in Grades 2, 5 and then in Grade 6— knew that he would have done well, but just not this well. Beyond his personal success, she too underscored that his performance was a “victory” for the school, putting the public school into the limelight once again. And it is with this momentum, and the teaching practice the teachers at the school employ, that they intend on maintaining this prowess.

For the young man, it is a classic case of ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’.
“Every child has to have some recreation,” he said pointedly, explaining that he went to the movies quite often, took swimming lessons and even played his video games quite often. He quipped that he was able to play his video games, but had to sacrifice looking at television for a few months in preparation for the assessment. Looking ahead, Dave told the Guyana Chronicle that he wants to study medicine one day, since he was inspired by TV shows and movies that helped to inculcate just how great a role doctors play in everyday life. But he’ll take the next few years at Queen’s College to decide just what kind of doctor he wants to be.