A year in the life of

WHEN it comes to Dave Matthew, awesome, unique and super-intelligent are just three simple words to describe the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) student who passed for Trinity College, after only attending school for one year in his life.

Fourteen-year-old Matthew, of the Laventille Boys’ Government School, scored 18/20 in Creative Writing, 77/100 in Mathematics and 85/100 in Language Arts in the SEA exam and placed 79th in the percentile ranking.

The well-spoken young man sat erect as he spoke to Newsday at the school yesterday, sharing several pages of his life, as to his reason for failing to attend school in his early years. Matthew said up to a few years ago, he and his siblings lived at several locations around the country, since they moved around often. About four years ago, one of his elder brothers succumbed to a kidney disease he had battled with for most of his life.

He recalled having to stay indoors a lot since they were not allowed to go outside to play with other children or attend school. He said a concerned neighbour called a radio talk show about two years ago to inform a social worker of the fact that he and his siblings never attended school and lived in a home plagued by domestic problems. A few days after, a social worker visited their home and Matthew and his siblings were eventually placed in a children’s home where they were granted the opportunity to attend school for the first time in their lives. The first school at which his mother tried to enrol him, was the Success RC school. She was however, unsuccessful, since the principal was on vacation at the time. On the second try, at Laventille Boys’ Government, Principal Judy Bedayse welcomed him with open arms.

Matthew said his first day of school was a bit awkward since he was not accustomed to being in the company of so many children and for the first few months, he had to both arrive and leave school under police escort. When asked about how he managed to cope with the school syllabus, Matthew said his mother home-schooled him and his siblings whilst growing up and he would usually read in his spare time, so adapting to the work was not at all difficult. He noted, however, that the Mathematics section of the SEA exam was challenging, but he remembered the tips his teacher, Clifford Baboolal, taught, and was able to pull his way through the exam. The confident young man said his math skills have developed to the point where he has started teaching his mother the subject.

Matthew is still living at the children’s home, whilst his siblings have been returned to his mother, who has begun making preparations to have him returned to her.

The soft-spoken teenager, who turns 15 on August 27, said he plans to become a business owner with a chain of supermarkets around the country.

His advice to students preparing for the SEA exam was “have faith and depend on God to see you through.” See Page 4B