There are many com­pelling rea­sons why the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am is not the best way to eval­u­ate a child’s readi­ness for sec­ondary school, in­clud­ing the lev­el of men­tal and emo­tion­al stress it in­flicts on can­di­dates who are chil­dren in their pre-and-ear­ly teens.

How­ev­er, those ar­gu­ments do not ap­ply in the cur­rent sce­nario, al­though the stress and pain were very re­al for two young­sters who topped the place­ment ex­am in 2020 but were sub­se­quent­ly put through an emo­tion­al wringer be­cause of sig­nif­i­cant blun­ders made in hand­ing out the awards linked to the ex­am.

At this stage, it would be dif­fi­cult to make up for the con­fu­sion, dis­ap­point­ment and em­bar­rass­ment ex­pe­ri­enced by Ameer­ah Beekhoo, Aaron Subero and their fam­i­lies. This un­savoury af­fair has cast a pall over what should have been one of the great­est achieve­ments of their young lives. It is al­so ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate that they had to go the route of le­gal ac­tion in what could be shap­ing up to be a drawn-out bat­tle with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Fin­gers have been point­ed at an uniden­ti­fied se­nior of­fi­cial of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion for this very avoid­able blun­der made in award­ing the Pres­i­dent’s Medal for 2020 to the top SEA per­former. That alone might not be suf­fi­cient. There is still a need for full ac­count­abil­i­ty from all those who are re­spon­si­ble for this SEA de­ba­cle.

This was not a com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter. The prac­tice has al­ways been that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry us­es the SEA pre­lim­i­nary re­sults to de­ter­mine the Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners.

The prob­lem arose af­ter Aaron Subero, who ini­tial­ly placed sec­ond, queried his marks. Min­istry of­fi­cials sub­se­quent­ly told the prin­ci­pal of his school, Maria Regi­na Grade School, that Aaron had in fact topped the SEA and was en­ti­tled to the Pres­i­dent’s Medal Gold, not the sil­ver medal.

How­ev­er, with­in five days, the Subero fam­i­ly’s joy and ex­cite­ment turned to crush­ing dis­ap­point­ment when the de­ci­sion to award him the top SEA award was re­versed.

It was al­so a bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ence for Ameer­ah Beekhoo, the right­ful re­cip­i­ent of the award based on the min­istry’s pol­i­cy of us­ing pre­lim­i­nary and not queried re­sults. The for­mer San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School pupil was cel­e­brat­ed as the top SEA stu­dent at a func­tion at the min­istry’s head­quar­ters on­ly to find out now that she would re­ceive the Pres­i­dent’s Medal (Sil­ver) rather than the gold.

The be­lat­ed at­tempts at dam­age con­trol have not worked. What­ev­er lit­tle con­so­la­tion there is to be gained by award­ing the Pres­i­dent’s Medal (Gold) to both stu­dents, as has been sug­gest­ed by their par­ents, will not erase this un­pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence for them and their fam­i­lies. This is all be­cause of the in­com­pe­tence and un­pro­fes­sion­al­ism with which this sit­u­a­tion was han­dled by the min­istry.

It is al­so dis­ap­point­ing that in the fu­ture there will not be an award to cel­e­brate the aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence of top SEA stu­dents.

Top­ping a field of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20,000 can­di­dates in an ex­am that re­quires two years of in­ten­sive, stress­ful prepa­ra­tion is no easy ac­com­plish­ment. Young­sters who reach that pin­na­cle of suc­cess de­serve to be cel­e­brat­ed.

Stu­dents are not to blame for this SEA mess, so it is a pity fu­ture can­di­dates will be de­prived of an award for their bril­liance.