Dear Editor,
Please publish this letter which was delivered to the exams division for the attention of Ms Saudia Kadir on June 5, 2019. To date I have not received even an acknowledgement of receipt much less an expression of concern. Is this how officials paid by taxpayers can be expected to treat concerned parents?
I am writing this letter as a concerned parent whose daughter wrote the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) exams privately. There were two major centres given to them: Transport Sports Club and Postal and Telecommunications Workers Union, (PTWU). On Monday the 3rd of June she had Biology paper 3 and knew that she had to go to the Transport Sports Club, Thomas Lands. She found no one there, so she went to the PTWU Centre on East Street and no one was there either, so she came to my workplace around 9:30 am frustrated to say that she wouldn’t be able to write the exams because no one is at either of the two places.
I had to make contact with the teacher from the Premium Academy to find out if he knew that there was a change in venue, which he did not, but he gave me a number to make contact with Ms. Robertson who was in charge of distribution of papers for his exam students. Ms. Robertson informed me that my daughter should go to St Rose’s. I accompanied my daughter and we got to St Rose’s at about 10:55 am. My main concern is that she did not get back her time to complete the paper even though her late start was not her fault.
There were some other children who also encountered the same problem with the change of venue about which they were not informed. They also were not allowed the “make-up” time. I’m sure you would agree that this was really unfair to the children. If the Ministry is not prepared to protect the rights of children taking exams privately this should be announced publicly so that parents who can ill-afford the fees involved do not make the financial sacrifices for no result as in this situation.
Yours faithfully,
Susan Collymore
