MONTEGO BAY, St James — Twelve-year-old James Welds, Jnr, the Corinaldi Primary School student who aced a perfect score in the recent Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) has lauded the Jamaica Observer’s Learning Corner, which he declared assisted him in part to accomplish his remarkable feat.

“It assisted me because it provided notes, and after the notes, questions on what is read,” the gifted student told the Observer.

His proud mother, Nickesha Welds, agreed with her son’s pronouncements of the Observer’s publication.

“The practice papers for GSAT that come in the Observer are sold at the school, so he used them to do activities, also. It contributed to his success because it was additional information from the textbook,” the satisfied mother revealed.

In fact, she noted that her son’s heavy reliance on the publication for study forced her to make calls to the newspaper’s Montego Bay branch to secure a copy of a week’s publication that went missing.

“As a matter of fact he lost one of the copies and I had to call and find out how I could get that copy that was outstanding. Because normally what comes this week is followed up the other week, so we didn’t get the other copy and I had to call the Observer to get that particular copy.”

But the impressed parent also had high praises for the Corinaldi Primary School — where her daughter, Nejae, is a grade four student — and her husband, James Welds, Snr, who played an integral role in her son’s GSAT preparations.

She assisted with his preparation in the art subjects; communication task, language arts and social studies, while his father prepared him for mathematics and science, the proud mother said.

“His dad did maths and science with him and I did communication task, language art and social studies.”

The young scholar, who for two seasons represented his school team as a central defender in the Samsung Under-11 League, as well as the VMBS Under-13 earlier this year, says he did not find it hard to fit sports in his schedule.

“It wasn’t hard to balance football and studies because VMBS started after GSAT,” he noted with a smile.

He describes his father, who represented his alma mater, Cornwall College, before going on to play for Violet Kickers and Wadadah — two St James football clubs — as his role model.

Meanwhile, the Corinaldi Primary star student who, come September, will be heading to Cornwall College, says after leaving school he would love to either pursue a career in professional football, preferably playing for Manchester United; or enrol in a foreign army where he aspires to become a high-ranking soldier.

His father says his son’s passion to become a soldier is motivated by his drive to “flex his muscles”.

“He sees the army as somewhere he can exercise authority. And as a high-ranking army officer he could accomplish this. I remember the first time when he got this idea was when we were talking about the population of countries and China came up and we said China had over a billion people and he asked what is the size of the army. He said he could imagine the authority he would have to lead that size army,” said Welds Sr.

In the meantime, the members of the closely knit family, who are members of the Mount Salem Open Bible Church in St James are all proud of Welds, Jnr’s accomplishments.

“I must say, yes, he has indeed made the family proud, himself proud as well; and we are glad we tried to help him achieve his goal by working with him because we saw the potential and we put in the effort and this is the reward,” remarked the proud father who is employed at the Inland Revenue St James branch, where his wife also works.

“I am happy with the results. I knew that he could do it. I expected him to do well. He’s always an ‘A’ student. I am happy, it’s not really a surprise,” the proud mother said.

“He has been working and he has been saying that he’s going to do it (perfect score). He normally gets concepts easily.

Actually, he was at a school before and in grade one the former principal had pointed out that he is a gifted child so after that we started taking notice.

Meanwhile, Welds, Jnr, recalled that he would study for hours to achieve his goal.

“Well, I just get up about 6:30 in the morning and (in the evening) I study sometimes past 10:00 pm and my father would have to send me to bed,” he said.