Rhon­dor Dowlat

A sec­ondary school teacher is cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) for al­leged­ly leak­ing ex­am­i­na­tion ques­tions to stu­dents writ­ing the 2015 Cape ex­am­i­na­tions via the so­cial me­dia site Face­book.

Sev­er­al par­ents and teach­ers have raised con­cerns to the Guardian over the past few days that the teacher has been host­ing dis­cus­sions with a group of stu­dents on an on­line plat­form on Face­book in­volv­ing over 3,000 stu­dents late at nights.

One sec­ondary teacher in south Trinidad said in an in­ter­view that teach­ers, like her­self, are stressed over the sit­u­a­tion.

"This has caused men­tal dis­tur­bance. It is like a night­mare for us to know that we work so hard to teach our stu­dents and work with them and our stu­dents are burn­ing the mid­night oil study­ing and cram­ming and just so on Face­book oth­er stu­dents li­aise with this teacher and come out the ex­am room say­ing it was easy like a breeze.

This is so un­fair. We are hav­ing sleep­less nights wor­ry­ing over this and no­body seems to be tak­ing this se­ri­ous. I won­der why?"

One con­cerned par­ent, Mar­lene Sum­mers, said the sit­u­a­tion was brought to her at­ten­tion by her daugh­ter, who is cur­rent­ly sit­ting the Cape ex­am­i­na­tions.

"This per­tains pri­mar­i­ly to the com­pul­so­ry Caribbean Stud­ies ex­am and al­so oth­er sub­ject ar­eas such as Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, So­ci­ol­o­gy, Eco­nom­ics, Man­age­ment of Busi­ness and En­tre­pre­neur­ship," Sum­mers said.

"A star­tling re­al­i­sa­tion has been made by not on­ly my­self but oth­er par­ents and teach­ers of what seems to be on­line dis­cus­sions that di­rect­ly per­tain to the ques­tions that ap­pear on the Caribbean Stud­ies pa­per this year in at least six out of a to­tal of eight ques­tions. I has­ten to point out, af­ter do­ing some re­search, that this is not the on­ly year that this suc­cess­ful lessons teacher has been able to di­rect­ly pre­dict the con­tent of pa­pers," she added.

An­oth­er sec­ondary school teacher, when con­tact­ed, spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, say­ing, "Just imag­ine the teacher pre­dict­ed a ques­tion that wasn't ex­plic­it­ly stat­ed in the syl­labus and it came for the eco­nom­ics ex­am to­day (Thurs­day)."

"This is too strange and too un­usu­al."

CXC in­ves­ti­gat­ing claims

?Cleve­land Sam, as­sis­tant reg­is­trar, Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion and Cus­tomer Ser­vices, Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil, in Bar­ba­dos, con­firmed on Thurs­day that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tions of a leak in the Cape ex­am­i­na­tions 2015 was still on­go­ing.

"CXC takes all such al­le­ga­tions se­ri­ous­ly and in­ves­ti­gates them ful­ly. To date, CXC does not have any con­clu­sive ev­i­dence that any breach oc­curred," Sam said.

Sam added that CXC had con­tact­ed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on the mat­ter.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Ali­cia Bus­by, said the min­istry was aware of the al­le­ga­tions but not­ed that the min­istry and CXC had com­plet­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and cleared the teacher in ques­tion.

Bus­by added that both the min­istry and CXC in­ter­viewed rel­e­vant peo­ple, in­clud­ing the teacher, as part of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion. She said checks were phys­i­cal­ly made of the pack­ag­ing of the ex­am pa­pers and these re­vealed that the seals were not tam­pered with be­fore the al­lot­ted ex­am time, nei­ther were the se­r­i­al num­bers on the pack­ages al­tered.

Teacher claims no wrong­do­ing

Guardian vis­it­ed the Face­book closed group page and saw that there were 3,288 mem­bers in the group.

There is a pro­file of the teacher say­ing that he has de­grees in Eco­nom­ics (Hons) and So­ci­ol­o­gy (Hons) and a diplo­ma in Pub­lic Sec­tor Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). The teacher al­so has, ac­cord­ing to the de­scrip­tion stat­ed on the so­cial me­dia Web site, a Mas­ters in Busi­ness Man­age­ment and a Mas­ters in Ed­u­ca­tion (Cur­ricu­lum) at UWI.

It added that the teacher has many years ex­pe­ri­ence in teach­ing Form 6 at the sec­ondary school lev­el and is a lec­tur­er at a ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tute.

"Most of the 'pre­dic­tions' are made with­in 12.15 am to 1.17 am of Tues­day 5th May, 2015," the pro­file read.

On May 3, the teacher al­so held an eight-hour crash course at a pop­u­lar sec­ondary school in Cou­va.

Stu­dents post­ed prais­es on the page to the teacher for his ex­am pre­dic­tions.

On May 4 at 11.05 pm, a stu­dent from Ch­agua­nas wrote: "(teacher's name) the obeah man, with the best pre­dic­tions of what's com­ing for ex­ams!"

When con­tact­ed on the al­le­ga­tions, the teacher told the Guardian, "The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion cleared me of any wrong­do­ing. So I have no fur­ther com­ment on the mat­ter. Thank you."