Garth Rattray

I have always had serious misgivings concerning the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT). It helps to propagate the economic, educational and social differences that alienate and disenfranchise vulnerable groups within our society. Children (many with significant socio-economic and educational disadvantages), are forever stratified according to academic competence, based on their performance leading up to and including the dreaded all-important, future-determining GSAT.

The GSAT has taken on such pivotal proportions that the Ministry of Education (MOE) has recently not only embarrassed itself through a series of seriously flawed assumptions, inadequate investigations and subsequent bad decisions, but also permanently impacted upon the life of a gifted student and her family. The MOE (acting on hearsay, without proper investigative procedures and without pursuing a course of 'natural justice') determined that a top-class student (and others) had been exposed to a leaked exam paper (at a certain homework centre). The ministry decided to award the 'suspects' their GSAT scores (because they were deemed to be unknowing participants), but it ensured that the top-scoring student was denied the Scotiabank Jamaica Foundation Scholarship - which is based solely on the GSAT score. Now, she will never have that very prestigious scholarship on her curriculum vitae.

The wronged student was always a high achiever, with the exceptional academic record of attaining full marks or nearly full marks in her pre-GSAT scores. She attended several extra-lesson sessions each week and her mother took the time to tutor her before the GSAT. Her average GSAT score of 99 per cent was obviously in keeping with her level of performance. It, therefore, came as a surprise to her mother that she did not win the scholarship.

Lopsided investigation

The drama unfolded when her vigilant mother noticed that the scholarship winner scored 0.8 per cent less than her daughter. This prompted her to contact the MOE and, for the very first time, learn that the ministry had conducted a lopsided investigation and concluded that her daughter was one of several students exposed to the 2007 GSAT examination papers at one of her extra-lesson centres. The ministry's insistence on the accuracy and legality of its findings, its ruling and subsequent action, led her to seek the legal services of André Earle and Anna Gracie (from Rattray, Patterson, Rattray).

The MOE had accepted as fact what someone had claimed to have overheard and went as far as to accuse the (allegedly involved) homework centre of participating in examination fraud. It insisted that the 'suspects' resit the GSAT, but the individual in charge of the centre in question refused to turn over the names of her attendees without a proper investigation. Suffice it to say, Mr Earle exposed the unsubstantiated utterances (used to impugn the homework centre and its students) as second-hand with no basis in fact. Faced with well-prepared counterarguments, the MoE grudgingly conceded its egregious errors, one by one.

Helpless Jamaicans

Wrongs and unfairness are sometimes perpetrated against helpless Jamaicans by some autocratic government bodies that exert the Napoleonic principle (of guilty until proven innocent). These bodies (ministries, departments or agencies), are so accustomed to systemic improprieties, deficient procedures and non-existent checks and balances that they routinely run rough shod over many of us using the awesome might and weight of 'the government' to intimidate and cow the citizenry into silent submission.

I, therefore, applaud Mrs Cleopatra Charles for standing up to 'the administration' and fighting for the rights of her daughter. Her battle against oppressive arrogance has won her a settlement and serves as a worthy example for all citizens not to acquiesce to injustice.