A for­mer Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege stu­dent has won his law­suit over a move by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to retroac­tive­ly mod­i­fy the cri­te­ria for Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) schol­ar­ships in 2018. 

De­liv­er­ing an oral judge­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day, High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo up­held the claim brought by Nicholas Sant, as she ruled that the min­istry’s de­ci­sion was un­fair, ir­ra­tional, and un­rea­son­able. 

Kan­ga­loo grant­ed an or­der quash­ing the retroac­tive ef­fect of the pol­i­cy and an­oth­er com­pelling the min­istry to re­con­sid­er Sant for a schol­ar­ship us­ing the old pol­i­cy, with­in five days. 

In his ev­i­dence in the case, Sant claimed that his de­ci­sion to chose to study En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence, Bi­ol­o­gy, and Chem­istry in ad­di­tion to Caribbean Stud­ies and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, was based on fact that he would have been el­i­gi­ble in two schol­ar­ship cat­e­gories-en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ences and sci­ences. 

Sant learned of the change, which meant that he could on­ly qual­i­fy in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ence cat­e­go­ry when he ques­tioned why he did not earn a schol­ar­ship af­ter at­tain­ing sev­en dis­tinc­tions and a Grade 11 in Chem­istry Unit 2. 

Sant al­so placed sev­enth in the re­gion in En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence Unit 1. 

The change re­quired per­sons seek­ing an En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence schol­ar­ship to have stud­ied En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence with Ge­og­ra­phy or Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­ences in­stead of Bi­ol­o­gy or Ge­og­ra­phy, as un­der the 2010 cri­te­ria.

In her judge­ment, Kan­ga­loo ruled that Sant had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that he would have been con­sid­ered in two cat­e­gories. 

She re­ject­ed sub­mis­sions from the min­istry’s lawyers, who claimed that the change was made be­cause of the lim­it of 400 schol­ar­ships an­nu­al­ly. Kan­ga­loo ruled that this could not over­ride the rights of a stu­dent, who act­ed in good faith based on the pre­vi­ous cri­te­ria when he se­lect­ed his sub­jects. 

The State was al­so or­dered to pay Sant’s le­gal costs for bring­ing the law­suit. 

Sant was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Alvin Pariags­ingh, Dou­glas Bay­ley, and Che Din­di­al.

Ste­fan Jaikaran and Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj rep­re­sent­ed the State.