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Proving that age is no barrier to education, Koletkar Kalpana Achyut, a 53-year-old woman from Maharashtra has passed Class 10 (SSC) exams, 37 years after she dropped out of school due to financial problems.
And that's not all. Achyut has done well in the exams, scoring 79.60 percent.
Sharing Achyut's inspiring story, her son, Prasad Jambhale, who is a senior software engineer at Mastercard wrote a heartwarming post for her on LinkedIn. "Very proud of you mother," he stated in the post.
Her story has since gone viral on social media, with congratulatory messages flooding Jambhale's post.
In the post Jambhale said that his mother had to drop out of school and start working at the age of 16 to manage the financial crisis at home after the death of her father. She had to also ensure that her siblings continued their education, he said.
Cut to 2021, Achyut got an opportunity to complete her SSC and began pursuing it immediately.
"The cost of offline and online training, study material all would be given free of cost by government," Achyut was told.
Since December 2021, she began going to night school. Achyut, however, didn't reveal about this to her family.
Jambhale said, "As I stay away, I came to know about it just recently when I was about to get married before her exams. Whenever I was in Ireland and used to call during Indian night-time, I used to ask where’s mom? And I was told that she has gone for a walk, I thought that’s odd that she got interested into walks. Little did I know that she was attending night school. She even managed to keep this secret hidden for a month from my father and brother, who stay under the same roof."
Jambhale said that his mother was a brilliant student in her class.
"When I was back in India, she showed me her notebook and I was amazed to see how good she was in Algebra and English. Even after so many years she was able to grasp everything so well. And not just that. Her exams were in March and my marriage was in February. She managed to do all the multitasking needed," Jambhale said.
Responding to people's queries about the scheme through which his mother completed Class 10, Jambhale said, "If you're staying in Mumbai, you can go to the nearest BMC school, and ask them for the admission to night school. Unfortunately, we are not aware about the existence of such a scheme at other states or cities."
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