Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

AS­JA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Rahi­mool Ho­sein is with­hold­ing com­ment on the on­go­ing le­gal dis­pute in­volv­ing one of its schools un­til the mat­ter is heard in court.

Ash­mead Ali has filed for ju­di­cial re­view against AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, on be­half of his daugh­ter, a Form Two stu­dent. It fol­lows a con­tro­ver­sial penal­ty im­posed on the stu­dent af­ter an al­leged in­ci­dent in­volv­ing unau­tho­rised ma­te­ri­als dur­ing a Ge­og­ra­phy ex­am­i­na­tion last June.

The school en­forced a strict “ze­ro marks” pol­i­cy, re­sult­ing in the stu­dent re­ceiv­ing ze­ro marks in Ge­og­ra­phy and all sub­se­quent ex­am­i­na­tions for the term.

Ali con­tends that the pol­i­cy is ex­ces­sive­ly harsh, pro­ce­du­ral­ly un­fair, and in con­flict with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Code of Con­duct, which em­pha­sis­es pro­por­tion­al dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures.

He al­so claims he was not giv­en a gen­uine op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fend his child and the au­to­mat­ic ap­pli­ca­tion of the “ze­ro marks” rule failed to con­sid­er the stu­dent’s age, her sta­tus as a first-time of­fend­er, and the long-term im­pact on her aca­d­e­m­ic record.

Ali is seek­ing to have the school’s pol­i­cy de­clared un­law­ful and the dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tions re­versed.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said she is aware that a par­ent ex­pressed dis­agree­ment with the con­se­quences met­ed out to a stu­dent al­leged­ly in­volved in ex­am­i­na­tion dis­hon­esty, based on the school’s pol­i­cy. She not­ed that it has es­ca­lat­ed to a le­gal mat­ter and the court will be the fi­nal ar­biter.