A 50-year-old grandmother has cleared the Meghalaya board’s 12th HSSLC exams. Lakyntiew Syiemlieh of Umsning Syiemlieh of Meghalaya, the mother of four children and grandmother of two, passed her Class 12 exams on Monday, after she had dropped out from the Laitumkhrah Presbyterian School in Shillong in 1988,
The Sentinel Assam reported that the single working mother never gave up on education and even enrolled as a student of Class X at a night school – the NIOS Umsning – and successfully cleared her exams.
Speaking to PTI, Lakyntiew said, “I stopped going to school because mathematics was too difficult for me to understand. I was offered a job to teach pre-school in 2008 and that was the beginning of my love for re-learning.”
According to the report, she was even applauded by the state education minister Lahkmen Rymbui for not allowing her age to act as a deterrent.
A North East Now report stated that after she had cleared her XI examination from the Balawan College as a non-regular student, she decided to don the uniform and sit for the board exams from St Michael Higher Secondary School.
The News Mill quoted Lakyntiew as saying she was never taunted in school and was called mommy by her classmates. “I like jamming sessions! And enjoy my life with them as a senior most student,” she added.
Lakyntiew who got married in 1991 has now said she would pursue her Bachelors and take up Khasi as a major subject.
