DEREK ACHONG

The par­ents of two stu­dents at the cen­tre of a de­ba­cle over re­ceiv­ing the Pres­i­dent's Medal (Gold) for their per­for­mance in the 2020 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion have agreed that they should both re­ceive the award.

The rec­om­men­da­tion for Ameer­ah Beekhoo and Aaron Subero to share the pres­ti­gious award was first made by lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Subero's par­ents 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 of Ed­u­ca­tion, this morn­ing.

In a re­sponse is­sue a short while ago, Beekhoo's at­tor­neys Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and Jared Ja­groo, said that pro­pos­al was the on­ly rea­son­able so­lu­tion in the cir­cum­stances.

"We see this as the best so­lu­tion that will mit­i­gate against any fur­ther dam­age and loss of pub­lic con­fi­dence in the process. More­over, such an ap­proach is like­ly to pre­vent un­nec­es­sary lit­i­ga­tion and uti­liza­tion of time, re­sources, and costs," Ja­groo said.

Ja­groo said that it was dis­as­trous and un­for­tu­nate that Beekhoo and Subero be­came in­volved in a "na­tion­al mael­strom", through no fault of their own.

"To de­ny ei­ther child the gold medal prize first place would be un­fair and wrong in prin­ci­ple...Nei­ther stu­dent is to blame for this sor­ry mess," he said.

Ja­groo al­so point­ed out that Beekhoo's par­ents were op­posed to the min­istry's pol­i­cy that the awards would be de­cid­ed us­ing pre­lim­i­nary re­sults is­sued by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) as was done in their daugh­ter's case.

"For the record, our clients con­sid­er such a pol­i­cy to be un­fair and un­rea­son­able. The Min­istry ought prop­er­ly to await the ex­pi­ra­tion of time for re­views and queries be­fore an­nounc­ing the top stu­dent," he said.

"To do oth­er­wise and se­lect top places from "pre­lim­i­nary re­sults" is a recipe for dis­as­ter and could eas­i­ly and pre­dictably lead to the very con­fu­sion, chaos, hurt, and dis­ap­point­ment that we are cur­rent­ly wit­ness­ing," he added.

Ja­groo sug­gest­ed that the min­istry should have clear­ly stat­ed its pol­i­cy to stake­hold­ers to avoid such con­fu­sion.

"The in­com­pe­tence and neg­li­gence of the Min­istry is matched on­ly by the lack of trans­paren­cy and in­for­ma­tion that char­ac­ter­ized this en­tire ex­er­cise," he said, as he not­ed that there was no ra­tio­nal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the process to be shroud­ed in "ab­surd ob­scu­ri­ty and se­cre­cy".

Ja­groo ad­vised that the min­istry should un­der­take an ur­gent re­view of the pol­i­cy.

The is­sue with the award arose ear­li­er this week, af­ter Beekhoo, who was an­nounced by the min­istry as the top per­former in Oc­to­ber 2020, was in­formed that she would re­ceive the Pres­i­dent's Medal (Sil­ver) at a cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent's House, next Mon­day.

With the threat of a law­suit loom­ing, the min­istry re­scind­ed its de­ci­sion and agreed to award her the Pres­i­dent's Medal (Gold).

Subero and his par­ents, who queried his pre­lim­i­nary re­sults af­ter they were is­sued in late 2020, were in­formed that he would re­ceive the Pres­i­dent's Medal (Gold) but were lat­er told that he would no longer re­ceive the award af­ter Beekhoo's fam­i­ly was giv­en the as­sur­ance.

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the min­istry claimed that the mix-up oc­curred when a se­nior min­istry of­fi­cial over­stepped her re­mit and used the queried re­sults to no­ti­fy Beekhoo and Subero about at­tend­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.

The min­istry claimed the use of the ad­just­ed re­sults was in breach of its long­stand­ing pol­i­cy of us­ing pre­lim­i­nary scores.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent this morn­ing, Subero's lawyers in­di­cat­ed that he had a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that he would be giv­en the award af­ter be­ing no­ti­fied.

"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," his fam­i­ly's lawyer Rishawn Ec­cles said.

Ec­cles not­ed that Subero's moth­er Natasha De Coteau-Subero made the sug­ges­tion for the stu­dents to share the award to act­ing Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Lisa Hen­ry-David, who com­mu­ni­cat­ed the ini­tial de­ci­sion and the sub­se­quent change but was re­fused.

Ec­cles gave the min­istry un­til 2 pm to­day to re­spond to the pro­pos­al be­fore he files a law­suit over the is­sue.

Guardian Me­dia is yet to con­firm whether the min­istry has is­sued re­spons­es to ei­ther Beekhoo or Subero's let­ters.