PARENTS and guardians of 19 pupils from Nagle House High School in Marondera have approached the High Court, seeking an order to compel the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) to reverse its decision to cancel their children’s yet-to-be released Ordinary Level results which were nullified late last year over allegations of cheating.
BY CHARLES LAITON
Zimsec cancelled “O” Level results for the entire stream after two students from the school were allegedly found in possession of prepared answers for a mathematics examination paper on November 24 last year.
The matter was eventually referred to police and Zimsec, resulting in the cancellation of results for all subjects that the 19 students had sat for.
But, the parents have argued that the move was unjustified as it sought to penalise other innocent students.
“There is reasonable apprehension that if the conduct of the second respondent (Zimsec) of cancelling all results of the applicants (students) for no apparent reason is not reversed, they are all going to fail to enrol for ‘A’ Level which enrolment is set to start in a few days to come,” the parents and guardians said in a combined founding affidavit.
“The applicants stands to suffer irreparable prejudice as they are all going to repeat form four something which will not be fair considering that they did not do anything which is unlawful and were never implicated in the cheating scheme,” they said adding “The applicants stands also to suffer irreparable prejudice as financially through their parents who financed the applicants by paying levies tuition fees and exam fees.”
The parents and guardians further said despite the fact that it was clear that only two students had been caught on December 7, 2017, Zimsec went ahead and cancelled results of all the other subjects, a move which they described as unfortunate.
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“The second respondent cancelled all results of the applicants’ subjects, including all other subjects they had sat for in November exams. The second respondent did so despite the fact that all applicants were not caught cheating in the examination room but only two students were the only who did so,” they said.
“The second respondents should have just cancelled the results of those students rather than cancelling the results of the applicants who were innocent and who had nothing to do with the unlawful actions of their co-students.”
The parents cited Primary and Secondary Education minister, Zimsec and school head Alexio Kurisa as co-respondents. The matter is yet to be set down for hearing.
