– over Hururu students missed Bio exam
Parents of the Hururu students, who missed their Human and Social Biology examination after an education official failed to show up with the papers, are demanding compensation from the government.
Murtline Britton, one of three mothers who visited the city yesterday to seek legal counsel, said that since the incident they have been unable to get “proper” feedback from the Ministry of Education (MoE). She said they “have been calling the permanent secretary and we were last told to call back today [yesterday] and we did but again we were told nothing,” Britton said.
Jennifer Fields and Sybil Harris along with Britton consulted attorney-at-law Khemraj Ramjattan. The attorney, speaking with Stabroek News at his office, described the matter as a very embarrassing one for MoE. The 25 students who were unable to write their exams, Ramjattan noted, have suffered trauma and great stress as a result.
It will be difficult for parents to get an immediate legal remedy since the Caribbean Examination Council cannot immediately allow them re-sit the exam. They will be able to write it at the next sitting in January.
These students, according to the attorney, attended a private institution were therefore paying tuition. MoE, he urged, should at least pay the September to December tuition for these students until they write the exams in January. Knowledge left unused, one mother stated, is lost.
The current incident, Ramjattan added, has also caused parents to incur miscellaneous expenses and MoE should compensate them for all of this.
Ramjattan said that he has since spoken with Minister Shaik Baksh. The education minister, according to him, has indicated that his ministry will pay the $6,000 subject fee in January so that the students can write the HSB exam.
“The minister also indicated that he will be sending two top officials to the location to investigate the matter,” Ramjattan said.
Baksh, according to the attorney, said the HSB exam papers were sent early enough and the official delivering them had enough time to get there. Ramjattan said the minister indicated that he didn’t understand what went wrong and intended to get to the bottom of the problem.
Several efforts made to contact Baksh for a comment yesterday afternoon were futile.
Meanwhile, Britton, Fields and Harris said that the time which their children have lost can not be returned to them. Some of the students had been planning to apply to the University of Guyana after they had written the exam.
“My daughter,” Harris said, “stayed up from one the morning of the exam to study for a few hours and worked very hard while she was attending classes… She used to walk over the hill to get to and from classes twice a day.”
Local authorities in Linden have also launched an investigation into the incident which prevented the students from writing HSB at this year’s CXC Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC). The matter was brought to the fore by several parents of children from Hururu Academy, Upper Berbice River.
The students, one parent had reported, turned up at the examination centre on May 7 at the scheduled time but after long hours of waiting for the arrival of the examination papers the invigilators sent the students off for lunch at approximately 14:00 hrs.
“All the children went home and came back and still the papers did not show up, we waited with our children up to 6 o’clock and still no paper did not show up,” Annette Ross had reported.
The distraught parent had said she accompanied her daughter back to the school after the break as recommended, and upon enquiry was informed by the invigilators that the test papers had not yet arrived, and that the Education Supervisor based at Kwakwani, Vivette Williams had left at approximately 3:00 pm for Aroaima to uplift the examination papers.
Ross immediately called Williams on her cell phone, and was informed that she was waiting at the Mapletown, Aroaima checkpoint to collect the examination papers which were being transported to Aroaima in a Regional Democratic Council vehicle.
“At approximately 18:00 hrs, several parents start taking their children home because they had already been waiting for a long time for the arrival of the examination papers. Some of the families were Seventh-day Adven-tists. It was not until after 20:00 hrs on Friday May 7, 2010 that I was informed that the examination papers reach in,” Ross had said.
The three mothers who visited Ramjattan yesterday told similar stories and believe that MoE owes them the compensation which they demand.
