Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) has been barred from fill­ing the va­can­cy for a prin­ci­pal at a sec­ondary school in St James, while a se­nior teacher, who has been act­ing in the po­si­tion for five years, pur­sues a law­suit over be­ing blocked from the re­cruit­ment process.

Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed an in­junc­tion against the com­mis­sion as the ju­di­cial re­view law­suit, brought by Nisha Ha­ley Thomas came up for hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In the law­suit, Thomas’ lawyers led by Ian Roach are claim­ing that the com­mis­sion act­ed un­rea­son­ably and im­prop­er­ly in rul­ing that Thomas was in­el­i­gi­ble for con­sid­er­a­tion for the po­si­tion be­cause she did not pos­sess a pre-req­ui­site un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree.

Ac­cord­ing to her court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Thomas, who is as­signed to the Sixth Form Gov­ern­ment School Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute, claimed the is­sue arose af­ter she sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion for per­ma­nent pro­mo­tion, ear­li­er this year.

She claimed that she mis­placed her uni­ver­si­ty cer­tifi­cate for her Bach­e­lors of Arts in His­to­ry and was un­able to up­load a copy of it when mak­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion.

Al­though Thomas was able to source a re­place­ment and sub­mit­ted it in Sep­tem­ber, she was still not al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in the re­cruit­ment process.

She filed the case seek­ing to in­val­i­date the de­ci­sion and for an in­junc­tion block­ing the TSC from fill­ing any po­si­tions of prin­ci­pals for sec­ondary schools un­til it is de­ter­mined.

Pre­sent­ing pre­lim­i­nary sub­mis­sions, yes­ter­day, Roach ques­tioned the com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion as he not­ed that in 2013, it pro­mot­ed his client to the po­si­tion of Head of De­part­ment based on her hav­ing the same de­gree.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that Thomas did not im­me­di­ate­ly in­form the com­mis­sion af­ter she failed to make the up­load and was in the process of ob­tain­ing a re­place­ment from the uni­ver­si­ty.

Roach ex­plained that Thomas de­layed in fil­ing the case but claimed that she did so as she sought the as­sis­tance of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) be­fore opt­ing to pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion.

In grant­i­ng Thomas leave to pur­sue the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad stat­ed that the com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion did not ap­pear log­i­cal based on the claims made by Thomas that are yet to be re­butted by the com­mis­sion.

“The de­ci­sion at this stage ap­pears to de­fy log­ic and com­mon sense,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that the in­junc­tion she was seek­ing was too wide as it could po­ten­tial­ly af­fect the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem by pre­vent­ing the com­mis­sion from fill­ing va­can­cies in schools across T&T and not just the four schools Thomas had ex­pressed in­ter­est in, in­clud­ing her cur­rent in­sti­tu­tion.

In­stead, he agreed to grant the in­junc­tion in re­la­tion to Thomas’ cur­rent po­si­tion as he not­ed it would al­low her to act in the role while the law­suit is be­ing pur­sued and to pos­si­bly qual­i­fy for con­sid­er­a­tion for the po­si­tion if she is even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful.

“It lim­its the im­pact on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem,” he said.

The com­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to re­ply to the al­le­ga­tions when the case comes up for case man­age­ment on De­cem­ber 15.

Thomas was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by An­tho­ny Bul­lock, and Alatashie Gir­van.