DEREK ACHONG

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the par­ents of the stu­dent who was wrong­ly in­formed by a Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cial that he would re­ceive the Pres­i­dent's Medal (Gold) for his per­for­mance in the 2020 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion, have sug­gest­ed that he share the award with the ini­tial top per­former iden­ti­fied by the min­istry.

The rec­om­men­da­tion was made by at­tor­neys Cedric Nep­tune, Tyn­neille Tuitt, and Rishawn Ec­cles, on be­half of Natasha De Coteau-Subero and Ja­son Subero, in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer, and the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the min­istry, a short while ago.

Ac­cord­ing to the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, in Oc­to­ber 2020, the cou­ple's son Aaron Subero re­ceived his re­sults for the SEA ex­am, with a com­pos­ite stan­dard score of 253.964 based on ob­tain­ing 18 out of 20 in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing, 96.4 out of 100 in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts and 100 out of 100 in Math­e­mat­ics.

Aaron, who at­tend­ed Maria Regi­na Grade School and was as­signed to Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, in­di­cat­ed that he felt that should have scored high­er in Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing based on his con­sis­tent per­for­mance in prac­tice tests.

His moth­er queried the re­sults and in No­vem­ber 2020, his score in the sub­ject was in­creased to 20 out of 20.

Ec­cles claimed that on March 31st, his clients were con­tact­ed by the prin­ci­pal of his pri­ma­ry school and in­formed that he would be award­ed the Pres­i­dent's Medal (Gold).

"Aaron was pleased and ex­cit­ed to learn that he ob­tained the top re­sult in the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion, and he no­ti­fied his friends and fam­i­ly of the news.

Five days lat­er, the prin­ci­pal con­tact­ed the par­ents and in­formed them that the act­ing Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Lisa Hen­ry-David re­scind­ed the in­vi­ta­tion.

The child's moth­er con­tact­ed Hen­ry-David and spoke to her in per­son.

Ec­cles claimed that the moth­er raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of her son shar­ing the award with Ameer­ah Beekhoo, who was ini­tial­ly an­nounced as the top per­former in the ex­am in Oc­to­ber 2020 and who the min­istry claimed was the right­ful re­cip­i­ent of the award based on its pol­i­cy of us­ing pre­lim­i­nary and not queried re­sults.

"De­spite the rea­son­able­ness of this sug­ges­tion, it was re­ject­ed as it was stat­ed that the is­suance of two Gold medals to Aaron and Ms. Beekhoo re­spec­tive­ly could not be fa­cil­i­tat­ed," Ec­cles said.

Ec­cles quot­ed a re­lease is­sued by the min­istry in which it ad­mit­ted that Subero was in­formed he would re­ceive the award based on a breach of the min­istry's pol­i­cy by a se­nior of­fi­cial.

Ec­cles claimed that the min­istry's pol­i­cy of on­ly us­ing the pre­lim­i­nary re­sults was nev­er dis­closed pub­licly, be­fore the is­sue arose when lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Beekhoo's par­ents threat­ened to sue af­ter she was told that she would re­ceive the Sil­ver medal.

"The po­si­tion adopt­ed by the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer and/or the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to re­scind the award to Aaron is un­rea­son­able and ir­ra­tional and is con­trary to nat­ur­al jus­tice and pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness," Ec­cles said.

Ec­cles said that his clients' son had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that he would re­ceive the award.

"The In­tend­ed Claimant is con­cerned with the prin­ci­ples and pol­i­cy in re­la­tion to the is­suance of the award it­self," Ec­cles said.

"The rea­son be­hind the de­ci­sion is mind-bog­gling and in­cred­u­lous as it demon­strates that the MoE seeks to ig­nore the ac­tu­al scores of Aaron, and to di­min­ish his ed­u­ca­tion­al achieve­ments ac­com­plished dur­ing the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion," Ec­cles added.

Ec­cles sug­gest­ed that the de­ci­sion would af­fect pub­lic con­fi­dence in the ex­am­i­na­tion.

"Our client has there­fore as­sert­ed that a re­view is akin to an ap­peal and if the de­ci­sion of the MOE in re­la­tion to Aaron is al­lowed to stand, it would sig­nal that it makes no sense to ap­peal a de­ci­sion or to re­view it, be­cause even if a re­sult is giv­en in your favour, it has no ef­fect," Ec­cles said.

"The ac­tions of the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer can seek to di­vide sec­tors in the so­ci­ety and put an un­due amount of anx­i­ety and pres­sure on stu­dents who al­ready did ex­ceed­ing­ly well," Ec­cles added.

Ec­cles said that if the min­istry does not ac­cede to the re­quest to share the award, the fam­i­ly would file a law­suit over the is­sue.

The min­istry was giv­en un­til 2 pm to­day to re­spond to the le­gal threat as the award cer­e­mo­ny is ex­pect­ed to take place at Pres­i­dent's House on Mon­day.