Max­ie Cuffie

There is some­thing strange about this year's re­sults of the schol­ar­ships an­nounced an­nu­al­ly based on the re­sults of the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions (Cape). The re­sults were an­nounced Thurs­day, Oc­to­ber 9, much lat­er than usu­al, with no rea­son be­ing giv­en for the de­lay. More than a month ago, the News­day of Sep­tem­ber 4 in par­tic­u­lar was ques­tion­ing the rea­son be­hind the de­lay.

I take an an­nu­al plea­sure in read­ing the sto­ries that nor­mal­ly ac­com­pa­ny the re­lease of the re­sults of schol­ar­ship win­ners. I es­pe­cial­ly like the ones which show tri­umph over ad­ver­si­ty, like the one this year of Na­pari­ma Col­lege's Isa Pooran, who earned an Open Schol­ar­ship al­though bat­tling kid­ney fail­ure and study­ing while un­der­go­ing dial­y­sis treat­ment three days a week.

As a news­pa­per ed­i­tor I used to in­sist that sto­ries like these be giv­en front-page treat­ment, since they usu­al­ly re­flect­ed up­lift­ing sto­ries still ca­pa­ble of sus­tain­ing pub­lic in­ter­est. So I was sur­prised by the fact that un­til Oc­to­ber 9, no an­nounce­ment had been made about the schol­ar­ship re­sults.

A check re­vealed that the re­sults of the Cape ex­am­i­na­tion had been post­ed on the CXC Web site since Au­gust 10 and a mer­it list rank­ing stu­dent re­sults, on which the award of schol­ar­ships is based, was sent to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to ac­com­pa­ny the re­lease. It took the min­istry two months to re­lease the schol­ar­ships based on the mer­it list.

As any­one who has a child go­ing to uni­ver­si­ty would know, the tim­ing is im­por­tant, since, for many stu­dents ap­ply­ing to for­eign uni­ver­si­ties an­tic­i­pat­ing schol­ar­ships, this year's re­sults were re­leased too late, long af­ter ad­mis­sion dead­lines and af­ter most uni­ver­si­ties had be­gun their aca­d­e­m­ic year. The tim­ing of the an­nounce­ment is not my on­ly is­sue with the schol­ar­ships award­ed this year; so is the fact that, af­ter sit­ting so long on the CXC mer­it list, the schol­ar­ships were, in ef­fect, award­ed in se­cret.

In an­nounc­ing the schol­ar­ships, the min­istry's long­stand­ing pol­i­cy of re­leas­ing the names of the re­cip­i­ents to the me­dia, in­ex­plic­a­bly, was not fol­lowed this year. The Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Tim Gopeesingh sim­ply an­nounced the Pres­i­dent's Medal win­ners from Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas and St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School and stat­ed the num­ber of schol­ar­ships award­ed to the win­ning schools.

The min­istry's Web site is not up to date, and some post­ings date back to 2010 (as if time stood still) while oth­ers go as far as 2012. In fact af­ter the min­is­ter's an­nounce­ment, the schools had still not been in­formed of their suc­cess­ful stu­dents and were told the in­for­ma­tion would be sent to them last Mon­day.

In nam­ing the re­sults of the Pres­i­dent's Medal, Dr Gopeesingh re­vealed that the num­ber of schol­ar­ships award­ed had in­creased from just over 300 in 2009 to 452 this year. He not­ed that be­tween 2010 and 2014, the Gov­ern­ment had award­ed 1,930 schol­ar­ships to stu­dents, but these schol­ar­ships were go­ing to few­er schools, as he ad­mit­ted that the schools re­ceiv­ing schol­ar­ships had de­clined from 40 last year to 36 this year.

The min­is­ter al­so ad­mit­ted to a bias in the award of the schol­ar­ship: "In keep­ing with the PP's thrust in ed­u­ca­tion, we have tried to en­sure that we move in the ar­eas of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing, arts and math­e­mat­ics, and we are work­ing with ter­tiary- lev­el in­sti­tu­tions to in­crease re­search be­ing done on a na­tion­al lev­el."

Dr Gopeesingh told the post- Cab­i­net press brief­ing last month that nine open schol­ar­ships would be award­ed in math­e­mat­ics and three open schol­ar­ships in the fol­low­ing sub­ject ar­eas: busi­ness stud­ies, en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies, lan­guage arts, mod­ern stud­ies. Two schol­ar­ships would be award­ed in tech­no­log­i­cal stud­ies and vi­su­al and per­form­ing arts. The prob­lem with this is that it is all be­ing done in se­cret with­out con­sul­ta­tion and trans­paren­cy.

Did stu­dents opt­ing to study busi­ness, for ex­am­ple, know that their chances of win­ning a schol­ar­ship would be less­ened? What pol­i­cy in­flu­enced the de­ci­sion to in­crease the num­ber of schol­ar­ship awards from 300 in 2009 to 452 this year? And what in­flu­enced this de­ci­sion to in­crease schol­ar­ships in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing, arts and math­e­mat­ics?

And why did the min­istry not re­lease the names of the schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ents to the me­dia, as is usu­al­ly done, and in­stead leave it to the prin­ci­pals, who had the du­ty to call the stu­dents in­di­vid­u­al­ly to in­form them of the schol­ar­ship awards? Some­thing does not feel right here. The PNM was right­ly con­demned for award­ing schol­ar­ships with­out trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, with the PP even go­ing so far as tak­ing the mat­ter to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

It is wor­ry­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en what used to be a trans­par­ent process for the award of na­tion­al schol­ar­ships and made it opaque, with no in­for­ma­tion be­ing pro­vid­ed on the cri­te­ria for de­ter­min­ing which ar­eas were pre­ferred for schol­ar­ships and who ex­act­ly were the re­cip­i­ents.

The opac­i­ty does not end there, since with the record mil­lions be­ing spent on com­mu­ni­ca­tions by the Gov­ern­ment, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's Web site can­not even pro­vide up-to-date speech­es by the min­is­ter or news re­leased from the min­istry. With the se­cre­cy, the num­ber of schol­ar­ships has risen by 22 per cent this year and will cost an es­ti­mat­ed $27 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter.

Un­til the min­istry pro­vides a full list­ing of the re­cip­i­ents and their schools to the me­dia and the pub­lic, one can­not help but sus­pect that there is some­thing to hide. Max­ie Cuffie is the prospec­tive PNM can­di­date for La Hor­quet­ta/ Tal­paro.