IT'S official: The Singaporean child who passed the O-level Chemistry paper just a month after his seventh birthday is the youngest to attain an O-level certificate here.

Ainan Celeste Cawley's record, set in January this year, will be published in next year's edition of the Singapore Book Of Records.

His next target: a Guinness World Record, and a pass in the subject at A levels.

His Irish father, Mr Valentine Cawley, 38, is a writer, while his Singaporean mother, Madam Syahidah Osman Cawley, 28, is an artist.

Mr Cawley said: 'This wasn't planned. All we did was to follow his interest. I couldn't find any earlier record in the world, and thought that this should be on record.'

So he approached the Singapore Book Of Records and will probably contact the people at Guinness World Records too.

The Straits Times reported on the boy wonder in March, just days after his family found out that he had scored a C in his O-level Chemistry paper, which is usually taken by 16-year-olds.

The Cawleys had signed him up for the exam at the British Council after they found him scrawling chemistry equations on a blackboard when he was six years old, and realised he could answer sample questions in O-level chemistry.

In one night, he devoured all 460 pages of an O-level textbook that his dad bought him.

Mr Cawley, who had worked as a scientist with Britain's National Physical Laboratory at age 17, then went through the book with him over a few weeks.

The boy has already finished studying the A-level Chemistry syllabus and his father hopes he will be able to take the A-level Chemistry paper next year.

His parents also plan to pull him out of his primary school in Bukit Timah and tutor him at home instead.

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