A 105-year-old great grandmother from Kerala has been marked as the oldest student in the country to clear the fourth standard equivalency examination, for her exceptional scores. Bhageerathi Amma had appeared for the examination, conducted by the state literacy mission, at Kollam last year and the result was announced by the literacy mission on Wednesday.

Bhangeerathi Amma has to give up on her dreams to study and gain knowledge after the demise of her mother. S he was the elder sibling and she had to take care of her younger siblings.

After marriage, her husband passed away when she was in her thirties and she has to take over the responsibility to take care of her six children.

During the exam she faced some difficulty in writing the exams and took three days to complete the 3 question papers on Environment, Mathematics and Malayalam, literacy mission due to her advanced age, sources said.

Bhageerathi Amma quit her studies after the age of 9 and became the oldest ‘equivalency learner’ in the Kerala State Literacy Mission programme to date. She scored 205 out of a total of 275 marks and scored full marks in maths.

One of her six children and 3 of her 15 grandchildren are no more. The woman has 12 grand and great-grandchildren. Literacy mission director P S Srikala visited the woman at her house in Kollam, about 80 km from here, to congratulate her.

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Bhageerathi Amma said she was keen to appear for the tenth standard equivalency examination.

A total of 11,593 candidates wrote the fourth standard equivalency examination of which 10,012, including 9,456 women, cleared it, a literacy mission release said.

Ninety six-year-old Karthiyani Amma had secured 98 marks out of 100 in Akshra Laksham, a flagship programme of the state-run Kerala State Literacy Mission Authority in October 2018 and became a role model for thousands of people who wish to be part of the literacy programmes.

The aim of the Literacy Mission is to make the state fully literate in four years. According to the 2011 census, there were around 18.5 lakh illiterates in the state. To wipe out illiteracy completely, the Mission has chalked out several programmes, especially among marginalised groups like tribals, fisherfolk and slum dwellers.

Source: PTI