Renu­ka Singh

renu­ka.singh@guardian.co.tt

The two chil­dren at the cen­tre of the SEA awards fi­as­co–Aaron Subero and Ameer­ah Beekhoo–will share the top spot for the first time since the awards sys­tem be­gan.

In a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion again apol­o­gised for the fi­as­co that tran­spired over the past cou­ple of days say­ing that it was not "in­ten­tion­al, and should not have oc­curred."

But while the min­istry has promised to in­ves­ti­gate how this de­ba­cle hap­pened in the first place, the par­ents of each 'gold­en child' said that they are all hap­py with the res­o­lu­tion.

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to Aaron's moth­er, Natasha De Coteau-Subero and Ameer­ah's fa­ther, Dr Nick­el­son Beekhoo, Sat­ur­day and both of­fered hearty con­grat­u­la­tions to each oth­er.

"I am look­ing for­ward to meet­ing her and con­grat­u­lat­ing both her and her par­ents," De Coteau-Subero said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

"We re­al­ly have to cel­e­brate the chil­dren and I can't wait to meet her," she said.

De Coteau-Subero is an en­gi­neer and her hus­band is in IT, and Aaron has in­her­it­ed their math­e­mat­i­cal in­cli­na­tion.

While this is a ma­jor achieve­ment for her son, it is not his first, young Aaron won sec­ond place in the Men­tal Maths com­pe­ti­tion in 2019, plac­ing first in Port-of-Spain Dis­trict and sec­ond in the coun­try.

Aaron Subero

Marvin Smith

"All the neg­a­tiv­i­ty that was be­ing thrown at them was un­war­rant­ed, it's not our fault how things were han­dled, and I think both chil­dren did ex­cel­lent and they should both be proud. I think the par­ents should be proud as well," she said.

Ameer­ah's fa­ther shared sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Beekhoo de­scribed his daugh­ter as "hum­ble" and one to shy away from the lime­light.

"These are ex­cep­tion­al re­sults from two bril­liant chil­dren," he said.

"Re­mem­ber they wrote this ex­am un­der the COVID re­stric­tions. In fact, they were the first group to write when the re­stric­tions were put in place."

The coun­try went in­to lock­down in March 2020 and at the time schools were closed and the SEA ex­am was post­poned.

The 2020 batch sit­ting the ex­am al­so wrote un­der the COVID-19 re­stric­tions which al­lowed no in­ter­ac­tion with their peers. Young Aaron, who at­tend­ed Maria Regi­na Grade School and is now at­tend­ing Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, is the first boy to get a gold medal since 2018, while Ameer­ah at­tend­ed the San Fer­nan­do TML and is now at Na­pari­ma Girls' High School.

"I am hap­py that this was re­solved am­i­ca­bly and that it was re­solved for the chil­dren's sake," Beekhoo said. "Now they can con­tin­ue on their aca­d­e­m­ic paths."

While the par­ents of both chil­dren are hap­py to have this be­hind them, in one of the le­gal let­ters pre­vi­ous­ly sent to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Beekhoo's at­tor­neys sug­gest­ed that there be two award streams–one for boys and an­oth­er for girls to pre­vent such a fi­as­co from tak­ing place in the fu­ture. At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Subero had first sug­gest­ed that the award be shared.

The award cer­e­mo­ny is set for Mon­day.

Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent: We are nvolved in the nom­i­na­tion or se­lec­tion of awardees

In light of the mis­un­der­stand­ing of its role in the lo­cal award sys­tem, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent (OTP) is­sued a state­ment to clar­i­fy that at no time was the OTP ever in­volved in the nom­i­na­tion or se­lec­tion of awardees.

"The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent sim­ply re­ceives the names of the per­sons to be award­ed from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty, is­sues in­vi­ta­tions to a pre­sen­ta­tion cer­e­mo­ny host­ed by the Pres­i­dent at which she con­fers (presents the re­cip­i­ents with) the awards," the Pres­i­dent's of­fice said.

"The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent has no knowl­edge of the per­sons who are se­lect­ed un­less and un­til we are pro­vid­ed with their names by the de­lib­er­at­ing body."
The OTP added, "These cer­e­monies are usu­al­ly held an­nu­al­ly. How­ev­er, over the past two years, the tim­ing has not been reg­u­lar and the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent has kept in touch with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to as­cer­tain when we would be sup­plied with the names of the re­cip­i­ents of the var­i­ous awards so that we could sched­ule the pre­sen­ta­tion cer­e­monies."

What took place

In 2020, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said that Ameer­ah topped the SEA for that year. That year the top awardees were all girls with An­jaana Dan of Trinidad Re­nais­sance Prep School in San Fer­nan­do plac­ing sec­ond, while Suni­ta Ram­sawak of Gand­hi Memo­r­i­al Pri­ma­ry School placed third.

Over the past two years, Ameer­ah be­lieved that she won first place un­til April 1, when they re­ceived an in­vi­ta­tion to the awards cer­e­mo­ny and saw that she was in line for the sil­ver medal and that Aaron was in line for the gold. There was no com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the min­istry be­fore this let­ter and her con­fused par­ents sought to query how that hap­pened.

The fam­i­ly is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on Mon­day over Ameer­ah's "de­mo­tion” and threat­ened to file for an in­junc­tion at the High Court to stop the awards cere­mo­ny.

The min­istry then re­scind­ed the orig­i­nal in­vi­ta­tion which placed Ameer­ah sec­ond and in­stead an­nounced she will be award­ed the Pres­i­dent’s Medal (Gold) for plac­ing first.

Late in 2020, Aaron's par­ents al­so queried his pre­lim­i­nary marks and were in­formed that he would re­ceive the Pres­i­dent’s Medal (Gold), but were lat­er told he would no longer re­ceive the award af­ter Beekhoo’s fam­i­ly was giv­en the as­sur­ance.

Aaron queried his marks and he re­ceived a high­er score in the Eng­lish Lan­guage Arts Writ­ing seg­ment.

Subero in­di­cat­ed he felt that he 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.

Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Min­istry apol­o­gis­es

The min­istry in a re­lease on Sat­ur­day apol­o­gised for the fi­as­co. The min­istry stat­ed, "Quite apart from the mer­its of any pro­posed le­gal chal­lenge by any of these stu­dents, it is im­por­tant to recog­nise that both chil­dren will have re­gret­tably and un­jus­ti­fi­ably suf­fered as a re­sult of the con­flict­ing mes­sages they have re­ceived."

It al­so ac­knowl­edged its role in this fi­as­co and pre­vi­ous­ly blamed it on a "cler­i­cal er­ror". On Fri­day Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said that the min­istry was con­sid­er­ing dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against a se­nior of­fi­cial who ex­ceed­ed their re­mit by vary­ing the place­ment list with­out ap­proval.

The re­lease yes­ter­day stat­ed, "The sub­se­quent treat­ment of this is­sue in the me­dia will have no doubt ex­ac­er­bat­ed this hard­ship.

"In a sit­u­a­tion where two high­ly per­form­ing stu­dents have both ex­celled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and have been both, through no fault of their own, been promised the high­est ac­co­lade of the Pres­i­dent’s Medal, and have both de­clared their will­ing­ness to share this ac­co­lade, as an ex­cep­tion to any ear­li­er prac­tice, this op­tion has been agreed to, as it would con­duce to the ben­e­fit of both stu­dents."

Ac­cord­ing to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, "To sub­stan­tive­ly de­fend the pro­posed le­gal ac­tions threat­ened by the re­spec­tive par­ents could po­ten­tial­ly de­lay any fi­nal res­o­lu­tion of this mat­ter which would not be in the best in­ter­est of the two chil­dren in­volved. Go­ing for­ward there will be a re­view of this process."

The min­istry said that based on the cir­cum­stances pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has rec­om­mend­ed, with agree­ment from the Pres­i­dent, to joint­ly award the Pres­i­dent’s Medal for Pri­ma­ry Ed­u­ca­tion (Gold) and Pri­ma­ry Ed­u­ca­tion (Sil­ver) to the top per­form­ing stu­dents at the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) 2020.

The awardees are:

· Ameer­ah Beekhoo San Fer­nan­do TML (Gold)

· Aaron Subero Maria Regi­na Grade School (Gold)

· An­janaa Dan Trinidad Re­nais­sance School (Sil­ver)

· Mer­cedes David St Gabriel’s Girls' RC (Sil­ver)