The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has been or­dered to pay com­pen­sa­tion to a teacher, who was wrong­ly de­mot­ed to a grade sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low the qual­i­fi­ca­tions she pos­sessed.

High Court Judge Joan Charles or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion for La­toya Thomas-Pa­ponette as she up­held her ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, last Fri­day.

Thomas-Pa­ponette be­gan teach­ing at a school in San­gre Grande in 1998.

In Sep­tem­ber 2003, she was as­sessed by the min­istry as a Spe­cial Teacher 111 (His­to­ry/So­cial Stud­ies) based on the par­tial com­ple­tion of her un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree and was in­ter­viewed by the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

Af­ter re­ceiv­ing no fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the com­mis­sion, she was hired as a teacher at Bish­op Anstey High School East/Trin­i­ty Col­lege East (BATCE).

Dur­ing her time at the schools, Thomas-Pa­ponette ob­tained her Mas­ter’s De­gree and a Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion.

In Ju­ly 2019, the schools’ di­rec­tor in­formed her that ne­go­ti­a­tions were on­go­ing for the schools to be­come Gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed and that all teach­ers had to be qual­i­fied in ac­cor­dance with the min­istry’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion stan­dards for sec­ondary school teach­ers.

She was sub­se­quent­ly in­formed by the min­istry that her qual­i­fi­ca­tions did not meet the stan­dards set in 2019 and that she was as­sessed as an As­sis­tant Teacher 111.

Thomas-Pa­ponette vis­it­ed the min­istry to fol­low up on the as­sess­ment but was told that there was no record of her file.

She re­sub­mit­ted doc­u­ments but re­ceived no re­sponse.

She con­tact­ed the com­mis­sion and an of­fi­cial was able to lo­cate her orig­i­nal as­sess­ment in a record book.

Thomas-Pa­ponette filed an ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) af­ter the of­fi­cial re­fused to pro­vide a copy of the doc­u­ment.

How­ev­er, it (the doc­u­ment) was still not dis­closed.

In De­cem­ber 2019, the com­mis­sion con­firmed her as­sess­ment as an As­sis­tant Teacher 111, which on­ly al­lowed her to teach stu­dents in Forms 1 to 3.

Her lawyers Tama­ra Gre­go­rio and Cordell Sa­landy then filed the law­suit al­leg­ing that the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion was un­law­ful, ir­ra­tional, un­rea­son­able and pro­ce­du­ral­ly im­prop­er.

In de­fence of the case, the min­istry’s cur­ricu­lum co­or­di­na­tor In­grid Kem­c­hand claimed that the qual­i­fi­ca­tion cri­te­ria changed from when Thomas-Pa­ponette was first as­sessed over two decades ago.

Kem­c­hand claimed that the changes were in­tend­ed to es­tab­lish guide­lines based on the min­i­mum com­pe­ten­cies nec­es­sary for teach­ing at dif­fer­ent lev­els of sec­ondary schools.

She al­so not­ed that when Thomas-Pa­ponette was re­assessed she was ad­vised of his­to­ry cours­es which should be com­plet­ed to re­ceive a high­er grade.

She al­so point­ed out that with the changes the po­si­tion of Spe­cial Teacher 111 was no longer be­ing used.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Charles ruled that the min­istry was wrong to base its de­ci­sion on the fact that Thomas-Pa­ponette spent most of her teach­ing ca­reer at a pri­vate school.

“To dis­tin­guish the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of re­place­ment sole­ly on the ba­sis of whether such teach­ers were em­ployed by the re­spon­dent is nei­ther rea­son­able or fair,” she said.

Jus­tice Charles not­ed that ex­pe­ri­enced pri­vate school teach­ers such as Thomas-Pa­ponette have in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge, their stu­dents have high­er pass rates than those of their in­ex­pe­ri­enced coun­ter­parts, and the loss of their ser­vice would un­der­mine the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

“There was there­fore no dif­fer­ence in sta­tus be­tween a teacher em­ployed in the pub­lic sec­tor and those em­ployed in the pri­vate sec­tor who had been pre­vi­ous­ly as­sessed un­der the old cri­te­ria and stood to be as­sessed un­der the new cri­te­ria,” she said.

Re­fer­ring to Thomas-Pa­ponette’s ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence, Jus­tice Charles said: “Save for the ad­di­tion of new cours­es, most of which were cov­ered in the Ap­pli­cant’s course of study, al­beit by a dif­fer­ent ti­tle, Mrs Thomas-Pa­ponette pos­sess­es the req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the po­si­tion of Spe­cial Teacher 111.”

Jus­tice Charles ruled that she is en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion in­clu­sive of ex­em­plary dam­ages for the min­istry’s con­duct.

“I take in­to ac­count the his­to­ry of the claim in­clud­ing the fact that the Re­spon­dent had lost/mis­placed the Ap­pli­cant’s file, the de­lay in lo­cat­ing her pre­vi­ous as­sess­ment af­ter in­sist­ing that there was no file at the min­istry with her name, and as­sess­ing her as an ap­pli­cant with­out a pre­vi­ous as­sess­ment as Spe­cial Teacher 111,” she said.

The com­pen­sa­tion is to be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter at a lat­er date.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Charles grant­ed a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the min­istry in­clud­ing one quash­ing its de­ci­sion and an­oth­er de­clar­ing that Thomas-Pa­ponette is en­ti­tled to be clas­si­fied as a Teacher 11.

The min­istry was al­so or­dered to pay her le­gal costs for the law­suit.

The min­istry was rep­re­sent­ed by Keisha Pros­per, Nicol Yee Fung, and Rad­ha Sookdeo.