Baby steps took her to matric glory
The road to matric glory begins long before the start of the final school year.
For Dia Singh, it began when she was still in nappies.
Singh, now 17, headgirl last year at Curro’s St Dominics Newcastle high school in KwaZulu-Natal, placed in the top 1% of candidates in the Independent Examinations Board 2023 matric exams.
She received 10 distinctions, obtaining 98% for maths core, 97% for accounting, 96% for business studies, 96% for Afrikaans first additional language, 90% for English home language, 96% for life orientation, 93% for life sciences, 91% for physical science, 94% for further studies maths finance and 95% for further studies maths standard (calculus and algebra).
“She is a very determined child. From the time she was small she always wanted to excel,” said her mother, Nerina Singh. “From our side as parents, we started teaching her to name letters even before she was one year old. We taught her shapes and things long before she could go to crèche.
“She also stayed with her grandparents when she was small and they did the same. They would ask her, ‘where is the sky?’ as they fed her. It starts at those ages to get the child’s mind stimulated and focused on school. It does not happen overnight.”
Dia was also fortunate to have educated parents. Her mother is an engineer and her father is an engineer with a PhD and three master’s degrees.
“I think it also helped to be surrounded by people who are hard workers. But it was her selfdetermination that got her to succeed. She took full responsibility for all her school work. She had her own goals that she set herself for her studies, she was selfmotivated,” Singh said.
Dia told the Sunday Times she had academic goals long before entering high school.
“I always set academic goals that were high for myself. In the final matric
But it was her selfdetermination that got her to succeed. She took full responsibility for all her school work Nerina Singh
Mother
year, it was just about putting in the same kind of effort that I had been putting in throughout the year.
“What drove me is self-motivation. I have always wanted to achieve. I wanted to move myself forward. I am scared of not improving. I am always working toward doing better. I have two smaller siblings and I would like to be a good role model for them so they know they can also do their best.”
Dia’s matric results are the latest in a series of achievements. She won a gold award at the Eskom International Science Fair in 2022 for her “plastic incinerated by plastic” project aimed at reducing plastic waste. She developed a system that burns plastic to create fuel, which is used to burn more plastic — a closed system of burning plastic with plastic.
The idea also won her accolades at science shows in Dubai and Taiwan.
She made history at St Dominics by becoming the first recipient of the school’s white blazer, reserved for pupils of outstanding achievement.
Dia plans to study actuarial science at the University of Pretoria.