The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

STUDENTS were not responsible for causing a reported national high school "examination security breach", Education Director Lionel Sands confirmed on Friday.

Mr Sands told The Tribune that no students had been identified as culprits based on information the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MOEST) had received from its investigations into the matter.

However, he said every high school student throughout The Bahamas will have to re-sit the examination as a result, including the students that sat the exam prematurely. He also said that whoever is found to be responsible would face "dire consequences", depending on whether the act was done "inadvertently or otherwise."

In a statement on Thursday, Mr Sands said that a Bahamas Junior Certificate (BJC) English Language Paper 2 examination was "compromised" at one of the examination centres. Mr Sands said the breach was due to the "sitting of an examination before the authorized test date".

When contacted on Friday, Mr Sands would not reveal the name of the school in question or confirm if it was a public or private school. Neither would he confirm rumuors that the school would be stripped of its status as a testing centre.

"Regrettably I don't want to say what school that is, because I just don't want to do that," he said. "With respect to consequences, we have not completed the investigation as yet to determine if it was inadvertent or deliberate. Until such time as we could determine if it was inadvertent or deliberate, then the consequences cannot be applied.

"We're still working on investigating to find out exactly why it happened. But I will say this.

If it was intentional there are dire consequences. If not then the consequences are not so dire."

He added: "Every student in this country would have to re-sit that examination including those students who did it inadvertently or otherwise. The information that we have so far, the students were not responsible for it. They will not be punished. Once we find out if there was some intention, then we would deal with whoever the person was who may have committed that intentional act."

According to the government's website, the BJC is an examination curriculum designed by the MOEST, which is typically undertaken after three years of study by junior high students at the end of the ninth grade. The examinations lead to an award of the BJC.

Ninth grade students at public secondary schools and anyone over the age of 10 at private schools are eligible to take the BJC. In addition, private candidates who are at least 16 are eligible for the exam.