A SEA of chaos

THE mishandling of the announcement of the top students in the 2020 SEA exam collapsed into debacle for the Education Ministry.

It fell to the families, who hired counsel to defend the exam results of their children and advocate for acknowledgement of their accomplishments, to find a civil and honourable end to the messy issue.

The education minister’s first position was to insist the original results would stand; an inexplicable decision given the facts that emerged.

Dr Nickelson Beekhoo, father of Ameerah Beehkoo, explained on Saturday that he engaged lawyers to express his displeasure at the way the error had been managed.

The legal threats in the matter centred around concerns about diminishing the accomplishments of the students and accusations of unfairness, unreasonableness and irrationality.

After more than a week of fretting, Ms Beekhoo and Aaron Subero were announced as joint top students of the 2020 SEA.

Both will receive the President’s Medal (Gold) today.

In the ensuing turbulence, Mercedes David was awarded joint second place with Anjaana Dan.

In the wake of this wholly unnecessary chaos, President’s House pointedly distanced itself from the brouhaha, noting it had no role in the selection of students chosen for the President’s Medal.

An unnamed “senior official” from the Education Ministry was blamed for “exceeding the authority of their remit” by varying the placement list without approval.

The minister might have found it unusual that grades were reviewed for a child who passed for their first-choice secondary school; it hasn’t been unusual at all for examinations held under covid19.

The CXC faced a flood of challenges over grades after students sat exams in 2020, when the exam results of candidates fell short of their work during that school year.

That alone should have guided the ministry to exercise greater care and patience in the handling of SEA results, not just in naming a President’s Medal winner, but also in acknowledgement of the challenging environment in which the teaching and testing took place.

Marking papers under covid19 restrictions is at least as demanding as studying to write them, as the CXC experience proved.

An allowance for challenges should have been built into the management of the results of the exam.

These issues are the consequence of a school system that continues to emphasise and assign rewards on the first-past-the-post system of education, when clearly, the continuous updating of knowledge is the real future of our children.

The best should always be recognised, but all students must be prepared for a lifestyle that embraces continuous learning.