Consider, if you will, having only two days’ break from your books and study routine over seven straight months.Imagine having to put your favourite pastimes on hold while maintaining a regime of strict discipline, not because your parents or teachers are insisting, but because of the lofty expectations you have set for yourself at just 12 years old.That was the reality for Jamaica’s top-performing boy and girl in this year’s Primary Exit Profile (PEP), Creative Kids Learning Academy (CKLA) students Zurie Cousins and Neeraj Sahukar.The two will head to Campion College in September on scholarships from the Guardian Group Foundation, a just reward for their outstanding performances.Cousins, whose shy demeanour belies her brilliance and who was valedictorian at her school’s graduation last month, shrugged matter-of-factly when asked about her achievement, almost suggesting it was no big deal.“The sacrifices that I made is that I had to stop some activities while we had the weekend classes. I had to sacrifice some things. I missed doing my swimming and my gymnastics and my hangouts with my friends,” said Zurie.Preparing for PEP was not limited to weekday, weekend and holiday extra classes. There was also individual work when no one was watching.“I studied for two hours after I came home because it was a lot, so I like separated them into segments each day.”Insisting that she felt no pressure from her parents, Kadeen Gayle and Alwayne Cousins, Zurie said she was confident that she had aced the examination, but was surprised to emerge as the top student in the island.Her father, the country chief client partnership officer at JMMB, described his daughter, who started at CKLA in Grade 3, as “a very unassuming child, who does not speak a lot”.“I mean, Zurie would just come home. I have to tell her sometimes, ‘Zurie, you just come home, shower, chill. Don’t have to get into the book’. She works very hard behind the scenes and she’s always focused and that’s what I love about her. So when you asked her if she was surprised to be top girl. Yeah, she was. I know she was doing well, but we didn’t expect top girl.”Cousins said last year’s Grade 5 PEP results gave him an early indication that his daughter was on course to achieve “something phenomenal”.“I was in a meeting at work and Haedi-Kay (Holmes, CKLA principal) texted me and said, ‘Hey, I have some news for you’, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, what’s happening with Zurie now?’ And she said, ‘Good news’, because she figured I was panicking, you know. When I called her, she said, “Alwyn, you would not believe it, but Zurie got 80 out of 80 for Grade 5 PEP’. She said she has never seen it before. She normally sees 78, 79.1 out of 80. She got full 80 score,” Cousins enthused.Cousins, who has two sons also attending CKLA, stressed the importance of parents supporting their children, especially given the demands of the PEP curriculum.“So, I was excited, happy for her, humbled in the same breath. I had her on a path and I can see the hard work that they put in at school because it was real hard work. Zurie did not stop school for the last seven months, only on Good Friday and Easter Monday. She was at school every single day. So I’m super proud of her, her mom is proud of her, we are happy for her,” Cousins told The Gleaner.Zurie’s father kept close to his chest the celebrations the family had planned, wanting to surprise his daughter, but said summer school was never an option.Top boy Neeraj Sahukar, a robotics enthusiast, also spoke about the sacrifices he made to ensure he was placed at his first-choice school.“So, I managed my time well. I used to ride my bicycle a lot out, and I used to play outside a lot, and I had to sacrifice some of that time to study and review my past papers and my books. My parents were very supportive. They encouraged me every step of the way and my teachers spent countless hours preparing lessons and they reviewed a lot with us.”The high achiever admitted to panicking after the examinations when he became convinced he had answered one question incorrectly.“I thought I did really bad after, Yeah. I thought I would pass for my third choice. I thought I didn’t do good. But when the results came, I felt very proud of myself. All the work I put in, it paid off. I feel great,” said Neeraj, who, like Zurie, scored 395 out of a possible 400.Neeraj is also destined for a fun summer, with trips planned to the United States and his parents’ native India.His mother, Dr Bharathi Sangappa, beamed as she praised her son’s dedication, saying neither she nor his father, Dr Vishnu Dev, put pressure on him and were surprised that he topped the island.“We always encouraged Neeraj to work hard, to balance between study time and his extracurricular activities and maintain a very healthy diet. He is very good at math, so that is his area of interest. He’s very much interested in robotics and tennis.”Any pressure, she said, came from Neeraj himself.“He told me [after the exams], ‘Math is 100 per cent, we’ll get 100 out of 100’. But Language Arts, he had done one question wrong.” Just because he did one wrong, he told us ‘I cannot get into Campion. Look for some other school. I may not get in because I did one question wrong’.” And he was really worried. I didn’t know his standards were so high,” Sangappa said with a laugh.She described the moment the family received the thrilling news about her son, who has been at CKLA since kindergarten.“It was a Sunday morning, when I was fast asleep, and the principal, Miss Holmes, called up and told us, ‘Did you look into the newspaper?’ I told, ‘No’. She said, ‘Open the paper’. When I saw Neeraj was at, oh, top of the nation. Oh God, I couldn’t believe it. I was overwhelmed with joy, pride, gratitude. Yeah. And without Miss Holmes’ support and the team of CKLA, we wouldn’t achieve this proud moment,” said Sangappa.The privately operated Windsor Avenue-based CKLA, which has been in operation since 2000, is no stranger to producing top students. Kaila Campbell was the all-island top girl in 2021 and went on to Campion College, where she graduated as salutatorian this summer.Principal Haedi-Kay Holmes praised the students, staff and parents for producing the country’s top-performing boy and girl, as well as five other government scholarship awardees, after a challenging period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Melissa.She stressed, however, that producing high-performing children who learn at different levels requires a deliberate strategy.“Rather than setting out with a rigid goal each year, the focus is on bringing the best out of each individual student by pinpointing their specific strengths and weaknesses and addressing topics they do not understand. We utilise a team-teaching model to allow teachers to focus on their strengths rather than spreading their time across all subjects,” Holmes told The Gleaner.Under that model, Holmes teaches Mathematics and Language Arts, while Janei Percy teaches Abilities and Science.“Unlike all other subjects, there is no curriculum for Abilities. As such there is no content that we are required to teach to the students. Instead Abilities requires the teacher to build the students’ cognitive skills. My aim is to get students to think. I do so by developing problem-solving and social skills that will serve them beyond their school days. I try to move them away from rote and memorisation. So there is a lot of reading comprehension, reasoning, analysis and problem solving. I also expose them to a wide variety of real-life scenarios, situations, questions, day-to-day events. The focus is to get the students to think and to do so creatively,” Percy explained.Chalk and talk are not the only methods employed. Holmes said the school also incorporates coding, movement, music and art into the curriculum to support student development and help them manage stress.And even as Zurie, Neeraj and other students speak about the sacrifices involved in achieving their objectives, Holmes cautioned that one approach does not suit all children.“Managing the workload is a balancing act and student capacity varies. While some students can manage up to four or five extracurricular activities and remain on top, others cannot. So the teachers evaluate students individually to determine if they need to scale back or focus on specific areas, while others are encouraged to keep going to expend energy. For students with heavy outside commitments, such as our footballers who had many matches in the first term also the (TVJ’s Schools’ Challenge) Quiz students, teachers make an effort to stay back and help them catch up on missed work so they do not have to drop their activities,” Holmes revealed.A popular maxim goes, ‘Uneasy is the head that wears the crown’, and Holmes said CKLA’s consistent success can lead to increased expectations.“We manage this pressure by focusing on continuous learning and looking at exam reports to see where students went wrong, rather than fixating on topping the previous year’s scholarship count. The primary focus remains on ensuring teachers fulfill their duties, students are learning and each child is supported to achieve their best possible outcome. We never start the school year thinking, ‘Oh, we need to get more scholarships this year than we did last year’,” insisted Holmes.The school has a population of 320 students, 36 of whom sat PEP this year. Seven earned scholarships, including the country’s top-performing boy and girl.karen.madden@gleanerjm.com