The Hindu : National : A very young achiever

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Wednesday, Jun 06, 2007
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A very young achiever

— Photo: PTI

TASTE OF SUCCESS: Sushma Verma's classmates congratulate her in Lucknow.

Lucknow: The seven-year-old daughter of a daily wage earner on Tuesday became India's youngest matriculate. Sushma Verma, born in February 2000, secured 354 marks out of 600 in the Uttar Pradesh Board High School examination. She missed a first division by six marks.

She got 58 marks in Hindi, 60 in English, 66 in Mathematics, 63 in Science, 68 in Social Science and 39 in Computers. She said she was happy to have done it, but was sad to have missed first division owing to her poor performance in computers.

The record for the youngest matriculate was so far held by Patna's Tathagat Avatar Tulsi; he did it at nine years.

Sushma took the examination amid media attention. Her school, St. Meera's Inter College, had worried this might divert her attention. But she "excelled in the examinations as expected," school manager Vinod Kumar said.

Sushma had joined Class IX directly last year, as cleared by the Secondary Education Department. Until then she had studied at home.

Her father Tej Bahadur Verma and mother Chhaya are elated. Their son Shailendra had passed Class XII at the age of 11 and later cleared the Scholastic Assessment Test and Test of English as a Foreign Language. He secured admission to a U.S. university but could not afford to go there. — PTI

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