Minister of Health Dr. George Norton has said the 250 nursing students who wrote the State Final Examination on October 18 and 19, 2016 will not be asked to re-sit these examinations “until a proper investigation is completed” into allegations that the examination papers were being sold.
Last Friday final year nursing students were in tears after they were told that they would have to re-sit their final examinations since the nursing council had tangible evidence that the tests had been “compromised.”
Speaking with Stabroek News student representative Jeanel Lewis had said that Principal tutor Cleopatra Barkoye had presented the contents of a letter received on November 8th which claimed that due to the discovery of tangible evidence of a “compromise in the papers,” all students would be expected to re-sit the examinations before the end of November.
At that time the distraught students were refusing to re-write the examinations until such time as they could be provided with evidence of this compromise.
“She [Barkoye] received the letter since the eighth but she didn’t find out any information so that she could respond to our queries. She could not answer our questions. We asked for evidence of the compromise,” Lewis said.
After students from the Georgetown and New Amsterdam Schools of Nursing publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the position of the Council, the National Health Policy Committee of the Ministry of Public Health met with the Chairman of the Nursing Council, the Director of the Division of Health Science Education and the Principal Tutor of the Georgetown Nursing School on Monday.
According to a release from the Government Information Agency the Committee like the students “were unable to get pertinent answers to questions about this breach.”
The release explained that Norton addressed the matter with media personnel saying that information reaching the council was that the papers for the Clinical and Functional Examination were sold.
“This finding has resulted in the Examination Committee of the General Nursing Council deciding to deem the current sitting null and void. The council has indicated that a new examination will be prepared and administered and the respective schools and students will be notified,” Norton explained.
He further noted that investigations are ongoing to identify person or persons who may have been responsible for the leak of examination papers.
“Investigations into determining the source of the issue are still being sought after,” the minister reportedly said adding that “investigations will be directed to the General Nursing Council since examinations are prepared under their purview and persons responsible for the test papers’ compromise may be within that system.”
Norton has committed to have any guilty parties identified being made subject to the law.
“We were informed … that the papers were sold and if that is the case, I would think that an offence has been committed that would warrant an investigation by the police, motion has been set in place for that to happen,” he is reported as saying.
While he could not definitively state the nurses will never be asked to rewrite the exam Norton has identified course work assessment as an alternative to a re-sitting of the examination.
“There are some persons who think that those who did the course over the three years and would have been studying, would give an indication of (performance) if they are in doubt of this examination results, whether that can be used (for grading),” he said.
Meanwhile the students have approached attorney at law Anil Nandlall to act on their behalf. Nandlall in a letter to the Registrar of the Guyana Nursing Council said that the students who are unprepared to sit another set of examinations are “demanding that their examination papers be marked and the results disclosed.”
In the letter which was copied to Norton, Barkoye and the Ministry of Public Health Permanent Secretary Nandlall stated that the 250 students who wrote this exam “categorically deny that they have any involvement, whatsoever, in any wrongdoings, malpractices and or irregularities in relation to or connection to with the said examinations. In fact, they absolutely deny any knowledge of the same.”
