DEREK ACHONG

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has sought to give an ex­pla­na­tion as to why the stu­dent, whom it had iden­ti­fied as the top per­former in the 2020 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion, was wrong­ly in­formed that she would re­ceive an award for com­ing sec­ond.

The ex­pla­na­tion, which placed the blame on a se­nior min­istry of­fi­cial, was giv­en in a press re­lease is­sued to­day, fol­low­ing re­ports that the min­istry had agreed to re­verse its de­ci­sion to award Ameer­ah Beekhoo the Pres­i­dent Medal (Sil­ver)—in­stead of the Pres­i­dent Medal (Gold)—af­ter lawyers rep­re­sent­ing her par­ents threat­ened to file le­gal ac­tion over the is­sue, ear­li­er this week.

In the re­lease, which did not men­tion Beekhoo by name, the min­istry ex­plained that it had a pol­i­cy of an­nounc­ing place­ment in the ex­am­i­na­tion us­ing pre­lim­i­nary re­sults is­sued by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC).

It said par­ents are then per­mit­ted to query the re­sults with CXC with the process tak­ing al­most two months.

"This query may or may not al­ter the marks of stu­dents, but does not al­ter the pre­lim­i­nary place­ment list, up­on which awards are made. This pol­i­cy has been fol­lowed for many years," it said.

The min­istry claimed that de­spite the set pol­i­cy, a se­nior of­fi­cial of the min­istry took the unau­tho­rised de­ci­sion to use the re­viewed re­sults to in­form stu­dents of an awards cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent's House next Mon­day.

"The Ex­ec­u­tive of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion there­fore views it as ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate that a se­nior of­fi­cial of the Min­istry ex­ceed­ed the au­thor­i­ty of their re­mit by vary­ing the SEA place­ment list based on re­viewed re­sults of some stu­dents, with­out ref­er­ence to or ap­proval of the Ex­ec­u­tive," it said.

The min­istry said that af­ter be­ing in­formed of the er­ror, the of­fi­cial was asked to re­vert to the orig­i­nal pol­i­cy and in­form the stu­dents and their pri­ma­ry schools.

"As a re­sult of this uni­lat­er­al ac­tion, the achieve­ment of the stu­dent who was right­ful­ly an­nounced as plac­ing first, based on the pre­lim­i­nary SEA re­sults of 2020, has been brought in­to ques­tion. This is high­ly re­gret­table," it said.

The re­lease al­so quot­ed Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly who apol­o­gized to both sets of chil­dren, who were af­fect­ed.

"This is a most un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion and though I am very sor­ry about the dis­tress caused to both chil­dren, a prece­dent can­not be set by the use of re­viewed re­sults for this award, as there are oth­er chil­dren who would have re­viewed their re­sults and have had to abide by the ex­ist­ing pol­i­cy," she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed that the min­istry's pol­i­cy of pub­licly high­light­ing the "Top 200" stu­dents in the ex­am­i­na­tion was halt­ed in 2020 with the min­istry on­ly iden­ti­fy­ing the top two stu­dents.

She al­so sug­gest­ed that there will be a re­view of the pub­lic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion process in the fu­ture.

"It is my per­son­al view that it has out­lived its use­ful­ness and is now an ad­di­tion­al stres­sor in an al­ready high-stress en­vi­ron­ment," she said.

In cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the fam­i­ly's lawyers Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and Jared Ja­groo point­ed out that in Oc­to­ber 2020, the min­istry in­formed Beekhoo, a for­mer stu­dent of San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School, that she had topped the ex­am­i­na­tion.

They said that the an­nounce­ment was made at the min­istry's head­quar­ters and Beekhoo, who cur­rent­ly at­tends Na­pari­ma Girls' High School, was pre­sent­ed with a lap­top, a cell­phone, and a Bmo­bile in­ter­net con­tract.

How­ev­er, in a sub­se­quent let­ter sent on March 31, this year, Beekhoo was in­vit­ed to at­tend an award cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent's House, next Mon­day, and was told that she would re­ceive the Pres­i­dent Medal (Sil­ver).

The fam­i­ly's lawyers claimed that they were "nat­u­ral­ly con­fused" by the sub­se­quent let­ter.

"We pause to note that at no time did our clients re­quest a re­view or re­mark of their daugh­ter's ex­am script and/or place­ment, and at no time were they ad­vised that any such re­view would be con­duct­ed, nor did they au­tho­rize same," Ja­groo said.

Ja­groo claimed that the switch in po­si­tion would cause ir­repara­ble harm as Beekhoo had been iden­ti­fied as the top per­former pub­licly.

"The Min­istry hav­ing pub­licly an­nounced that Ameer­ah placed first in the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion with an of­fi­cial awards cer­e­mo­ny which was cov­ered by the me­dia can­not now, two years lat­er sim­ply in­vite her to an­oth­er awards cer­e­mo­ny host­ed by the Head of State, Her Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of T&T and ca­su­al­ly in­di­cate that she is to re­ceive a prize for plac­ing sec­ond," he said.

"This vi­o­lates our clients' le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion and is patent­ly un­fair. It al­so breach­es her con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­tec­tion of the law and equal­i­ty of treat­ment," he added.

Ja­groo sug­gest­ed that the min­istry should have con­sult­ed be­fore any change was made.

"Our clients are con­cerned that such con­duct will un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion and ex­pose the Min­istry to charges of un­fair, se­cret ma­nip­u­la­tion of the re­sults," he said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the par­ents of the child, who was wrong­ly in­formed that he would re­ceive the top prize on the re­viewed re­sults, are con­tem­plat­ing le­gal ac­tion.