Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A fa­ther has tak­en le­gal ac­tion against AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, chal­leng­ing the school’s ex­am­i­na­tion pol­i­cy, af­ter his 13-year-old daugh­ter was pe­nalised with ze­ro marks across all sub­jects fol­low­ing an al­leged cheat­ing in­ci­dent.

Ash­mead Ali, act­ing on be­half of his daugh­ter, has filed for ju­di­cial re­view against the school’s act­ing prin­ci­pal, Aliyah Amars­ingh-Mo­hammed, AS­JA Girls’ Col­lege, and the AS­JA Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment.

The le­gal claim, filed in the High Court in San Fer­nan­do, ar­gues that the school’s de­ci­sion was dis­pro­por­tion­ate, un­rea­son­able, and in vi­o­la­tion of nat­ur­al jus­tice.

The is­sue stems from an in­ci­dent on June 14, 2024, dur­ing the school’s term three ex­ams, when the Form One stu­dent was al­leged­ly found with unau­tho­rised notes dur­ing her ge­og­ra­phy ex­am.

Fol­low­ing a dis­ci­pli­nary con­fer­ence on June 18, the school im­posed an au­to­mat­ic penal­ty of ze­ro marks for all sub­jects on her re­port card. The school cit­ed its stu­dent hand­book pol­i­cy, claim­ing it had no dis­cre­tion in the mat­ter.

Ali con­tends that the pun­ish­ment was ex­ces­sive, as it did not con­sid­er his daugh­ter’s age, the fact that it was a first-time of­fence, or the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s guide­lines on ex­am in­frac­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry’s Code of Con­duct, penal­ties for such in­ci­dents should be pro­por­tion­al and can in­clude parental meet­ings, coun­selling, or sus­pen­sion—but not an au­to­mat­ic ze­ro in all sub­jects.

In his af­fi­davit, Ali de­scribed the school’s dis­ci­pli­nary process as flawed and pro­ce­du­ral­ly un­fair.

“The child was dis­cov­ered with some unau­tho­rised ma­te­r­i­al in the ex­am. Whether she used the ma­te­r­i­al or didn’t use the ma­te­r­i­al is not a con­sid­er­a­tion. They found her with some notes on that par­tic­u­lar sub­ject for that par­tic­u­lar ex­am.

So, nat­u­ral­ly, in any course of life, and even my­self, be­ing a prin­ci­pal, a teacher, and a pro­fes­sor, you will nat­u­ral­ly give the child ze­ro in the ex­am for that ex­am,” he said.

He claims he was pre­sent­ed with a pre-pre­pared dis­ci­pli­nary re­port at the meet­ing and was giv­en no re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­test the school’s de­ci­sion.

He al­so ar­gues that the pun­ish­ment was ap­plied in­con­sis­tent­ly, as his daugh­ter’s re­port card ini­tial­ly in­clud­ed in­cor­rect en­tries and ad­di­tion­al penal­ties not for­mal­ly de­cid­ed up­on dur­ing the dis­ci­pli­nary con­fer­ence.

“The school’s pol­i­cy is not aligned with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s guide­lines and de­nies my daugh­ter the right to a fair as­sess­ment of her aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance,” Ali stat­ed.

Ali not­ed that ef­forts to re­solve the mat­ter through meet­ings and cor­re­spon­dence be­tween his at­tor­ney and the school were un­suc­cess­ful, lead­ing to the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion.

Ali is seek­ing a court rul­ing to de­clare the school’s pol­i­cy null and void and to re­move the penal­ties from his daugh­ter’s aca­d­e­m­ic record.

“Let me just give them the ben­e­fit of the doubt that it is a good pol­i­cy, right? So, re­mem­ber what I said to you—you get caught cheat­ing in the sec­ond ex­am. Their pol­i­cy says all the re­main­ing ex­ams—you will get to write them, but your re­port will show ze­ro.

“So, our next child, Ex­am­ple B, is caught cheat­ing in the ninth ex­am. That child will get eight marks and two ze­ros. So, ba­si­cal­ly, what we are telling the chil­dren is: don’t cheat ear­ly in life; cheat lat­er in life. You will come out bet­ter,” Ali ex­plained.

He fur­ther elab­o­rat­ed, “So, Child A had one cheat and got nine ze­ros. Child B had one cheat and got two ze­ros. Where on earth could that make sense? So, I took them to court.”

The mat­ter was heard be­fore Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad last Fri­day af­ter it was filed in Oc­to­ber. Jus­tice Ram­per­sad grant­ed per­mis­sion for the ju­di­cial re­view.

All par­ties in­volved were of­fi­cial­ly served in De­cem­ber af­ter the judge’s de­ci­sion ear­li­er that month.

The next hear­ing is sched­uled for this Fri­day.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to AS­JA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Rahi­mool Ho­sein, who stat­ed that he was in a meet­ing re­gard­ing the mat­ter and that an of­fi­cial state­ment would be is­sued soon.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who said she was aware that a par­ent ex­pressed dis­agree­ment with the con­se­quences met­ed out to a stu­dent al­leged­ly in­volved in ex­am­i­na­tion dis­hon­esty, based on the school’s pol­i­cy, and that the court would now be the fi­nal ar­biter.