MI student who went on hiatus returns to bag near-perfect score

Ms Ashvini Annathurai left school in the second year leading up to her A-level examinations after getting pregnant.

In 2020, when she was 21, she took time off for a year to look after her newborn twin daughters.

She then wrote to her school, Millennia Institute (MI), to ask if she could go back and finish her course the next year.

Her principal said "yes".

Yesterday, Ms Ashvini, 23, picked up four As and a near-perfect score of 88.75 out of 90 for her A-level exams. She took biology, chemistry, mathematics and economics, as well as Tamil, project work and General Paper.

Ms Ashvini found out she was pregnant in 2019 when she was about to take her first round of exams at the end of her second year at MI. She had to deal with morning sickness and other ailments during the exams.

She said: "I actually missed one of my biology exams because I was so sick I just threw up on the bus to school and had to go home."

At MI - a pre-university institute where most students take an average of seven A-level subjects over three years - the H1-level exams are taken in Year 2 and H2 exams in Year 3.

H1 and H2 are different levels of difficulty for the same subject.

Ms Ashvini completed three H1 subjects for the A levels before leaving MI to give birth to her twins. But she did not want to give up her dream of becoming a doctor, so after her hiatus in 2020, she returned to MI last year to finish her three H2 subjects.

When she returned to school, the community rallied around and embraced her, she said.

"My teachers really took the time to take care of me, and two of them, including my form teacher, Ms Jamie Shen, even delivered toys, books and clothes to my house."

Still, even with the support from her school, her mother and her husband, Ms Ashvini had to make sure she managed her time carefully.

She and her husband, 25, got married during her year off from school. She declined to go into details about her husband and family members.

The former Crescent Girls' School student first went to Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) to try out the International Baccalaureate programme but felt that it was not the right fit for her.

So she switched to MI.

Ms Ashvini - who is now doing an internship at a special education school for children with autism-plans to apply to local universities for a place in their medical courses.

When asked about her results and performance in school, she said: "I don't know how I did it, but all the while, I told myself I had to do this for my kids."