The call by the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) on the re­cent CSEC Maths ex­am­i­na­tion cheat­ing scan­dal may not please all stake­hold­ers but may have been the best de­ci­sion pos­si­ble. CXC’s an­nounce­ment that there will be no re-sit­ting of the ex­am would have brought re­lief to the thou­sands of par­ents and stu­dents across the re­gion who were fear­ing the worst af­ter the scan­dal broke and a sub­se­quent call to have it re­done was made.

The CSEC ex­ams, af­ter all, is an­oth­er ma­jor hur­dle in the lives of young stu­dents seek­ing to bet­ter their ed­u­ca­tion—one of the foun­da­tion­al pil­lars on which most so­ci­eties are based. This was why there was such a huge feel­ing of dis­ap­point­ment when on May 15, a video sur­faced on so­cial me­dia show­ing stu­dents at the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary open­ly us­ing their cell phones to cheat in the ex­am room, a sit­u­a­tion fa­cil­i­tat­ed by a lack of the req­ui­site num­ber of in­vig­i­la­tors for the ex­er­cise.

Of course, the stu­dents in­volved, the school it­self and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion should take some blame for this un­for­tu­nate sce­nario. The stu­dents, hav­ing pre­pared for their sec­ondary school lives thus far for this ac­tiv­i­ty, should not have had to take such dras­tic mea­sure and ought to have known bet­ter oth­er­wise. The min­istry, mean­while, should have pro­vid­ed am­ple in­vig­i­la­tors for the process. Who bet­ter than the min­istry to know that in the ab­sence of strict su­per­vi­sion, some un­pre­pared stu­dents may very well seek to give them­selves an un­fair ad­van­tage?

CXC’s find­ing that there was "no breach of ex­am­i­na­tion pa­pers be­fore or dur­ing the ex­ams", there­fore, may have let the adults in this process off the hook for cre­at­ing a sce­nario which the young stu­dents sim­ply could not re­sist. But so far, on­ly the in­vig­i­la­tors as­signed to the school have paid the price for al­low­ing the sit­u­a­tion af­ter be­ing quick­ly fired by the min­istry. It is left to be seen now whether the min­istry will al­so take a fur­ther step by re­liev­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tors re­spon­si­ble for al­low­ing the in­vig­i­la­tor re­source sce­nario to de­vel­op to a point that there sim­ply were not enough to go around for this crit­i­cal ex­er­cise?

Need­less to say, the prin­ci­ple of fair­ness had sparked a re­gion­al pe­ti­tion call­ing on CXC to let all stu­dents re-sit the Maths ex­ams fol­low­ing the se­ri­ous breach­es of the ex­am reg­u­la­tions at the school. CXC’s de­ci­sion has re­lieved the key stake­hold­ers of the psy­cho­log­i­cal stress they faced with the prospect of hav­ing to re­do the process. How­ev­er, the process must not stop here. The min­istry, af­ter com­plet­ing its own probe, must al­so af­ford the stu­dents a me­di­a­tion process to de­ter­mine why they felt so com­fort­able do­ing what they did, of­fer them coun­selling go­ing for­ward and strength­en its own ex­am pro­to­cols for fu­ture ex­er­cis­es.