FIFTEEN-year-old Hugh Jacobs was all smiles yesterday after learning that he had scored eight distinctions in the May/June Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC).

The St Mary's College pupil, who received his results at the Frederick Street, Port of Spain School—which is also known as the College of the Immaculate Conception (CIC)—had a celebrity moment when colleagues, parents and teachers literally bombarded him with hugs and kisses.

Jacobs, who hails from Chaguanas, told the Express, "I'm excited and happy, a lot of hard work went into it and I'm just really grateful."

Jacobs has already signed up for sixth form at CIC to pursue Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE) in the science field.

His schoolmate Mikyle Moochan, who is also from Chaguanas, got nine passes—seven I's, a II and a B in Additional Mathematics.

"I got the shock of my life seeing that I got all my passes," he said.

"My parents not even expecting me to do so well so they will also be shocked to see my results," he said.

As Jacobs and Moochan embraced each other, the boys boasted "that's how we rock" in response to comments from fellow pupils that South and Central pupils normally did well.

Meanwhile, other schools throughout the East-West corridor also reported success in the exams.

At El Dorado West Secondary, a representative told the Express that out of the 220 children who wrote the examinations, 95 per cent of them left with full CSEC certificates.

At Holy Cross College in Arima, principal Andre Howard said they received good passes overall but admitted that the boys' performance was the lowest the school had in ten years.

"It could have been a number of reasons ... but I think it had to do a lot with the fact that the Ministry of Education made the January exams free," he said.

Howard explained that since the exams were free this year, a lot of the pupils wrote their exams in January "and were very successful", but when May rolled around, "some of them did not even turn up to write the exams".

Another area that showed a great decline was Add Maths.

He said, "A lot of the boys did not get the grade they thought they would have and I think it's a good idea that (Caribbean Examination Council) CXC will now have a syllabus for that ... because with Cambridge there are no checks and balances in place and in CXC there are moderators and its more controlled."

Nevertheless, Howard said many of his pupils have qualified to sign up for the CAPE and "that's a good thing".