Turning challenges into motivation for succes

The Kaitlyn King story

16-year-old Kaitlyn King of North West Secondary School, in Region One.

Kaieteur News – Sixteen-year-old Kaitlyn King emerged as the top performer of the North West Secondary School, Region One, at this year’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams.

The teen who hails from Mabaruma, Region One, wrote 10 subjects at the 2025 examinations and secured nine Grade Ones and one Grade Two.

Despite her elation, her journey was not an easy one. Masked with the uncertainty of the Novel Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 to the destruction of her secondary school in 2021, Kaitlyn used the challenges in her academic journey to motivate her to achieving her goals.

In an interview with Kaieteur News, Kaitlyn said COVID-19 struck just as she was about to write the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) exams also known as Common Entrance. The exams, which are usually written in March/ April of every year, were pushed to July/August of 2020.

The young lady was awarded a place at the North West Secondary School but due to the pandemic was unable to start school at the start of the new academic year – September.

All schools were closed to face-to-face learning and unfortunately, children across the country missed almost two grades of school. In Kaitlyn’s case, she missed almost two grades of secondary school. She started her secondary school life in 2022.

Instead of 14 terms, students were left with nine terms in that academic year as they returned to face-to-face learning in April 2022 instead of September 2020.

“They actually started in the second term of Form Two (Grade Eight),” Chief Education Officer Saddam Hussein said recently during the release Caribbean Examinations Council’s preliminary CSEC and CAPE results.

However, in Kaitlyn’s case, while maneuvering the challenges associated with COVID-19, the school she placed at was destroyed by fire in September 2021.

“I didn’t get to start high school in that school, so in Form One there was COVID. So, I missed that entire grade and then half of Form Two I missed that entire term because of COVID. So, when the school burned down, we kind of like had to switch to different learning sites. People were in fields; people were in the small primary school and then they built a small alternative building where the Form Fours and Fives were in. So, I spent most of my school life up to Form Four in those sites.”

The dynamics of the situation made the teen feel like “giving up hope” while in the 4th form.

“Because I missed Form One that was like the foundation, I missed half of Form Two and then Form Three was the only full class I ever gotten because in Form Four there was a strike for like three to four months and then there was the border issues with Venezuela, so Form Three was only like my full school period,” she related.

Kaitlyn told Kaieteur News that when she started her secondary school journey, she and her classmates were accommodated in the building of a primary school. In Form Four, the students were moved to another building which was constructed specifically for students of Grades 10 and 11.

“It was hard,” she said of the circumstances. The young lady said she was placed in the business stream for that is where her interest lies. While it was difficult for her, she said her schoolmates who were in the science stream struggled significantly because they were required to complete lab work.

In 5th Form, Kaitlyn said the situation got worse. “They (the teachers) would ask for a specific topic that we should have covered within the Form One to Form Four period and we would not know that because we didn’t get to finish any of the syllabuses within Form One and Form Four… we were so behind and we would have to go back the topics and we did not know everything that we had to. The foundation is crucial when you are in Form One to Form Four, so it was harder in Form Five for me,” she explained.

In October 2024, while in Form Five, the new North West Secondary School was commissioned by President Irfaan Ali and Minister of Education Priya Manickchand.

Having set her own personal goal of excelling at the CSEC exams, Kaitlyn said she paid keen attention to areas she was not strong in. She used the internet to research topics, watch videos and study.

The committed teen said she attended Mathematics lessons from 06:30hrs to 08:00hrs and 15:00hrs to 17:00hrs in the afternoons and utilised all of the resources made available to her by the Ministry of Education.