SEVEN YEARS after they sat their exams as Queens College students, Amanda Mason and Tessa Cox have been declared winners of a Barbados Scholarship and an Exhibition, respectively.
Amanda whose surname was Hutchinson back in 2003 is now a married 25-year-old aircraft engineer at Farnborough airport in Hampshire, England. She had been awarded an exhibition which she never accepted.
Cox is training to be an actuary at a private firm, Towers Watson, in England having graduated from The City University in England with first class honours in actuarial science.
Each has received an apology from the Ministry of Education, plus congratulations from the Minister of Education Ronald Jones, according to attorney-at-law Hal Gollop, who was engaged to challenge the examination results of nine students.
Five of those students later received scholarships and two received exhibitions, but the results of the cases of Mason and Cox were not known until earlier this week through a letter from the Cabinet.
Roger Hutchinson, Amanda’s father, said the problem arose because it was the first year the CAPE examinations had been introduced.
“They did A level Math in the first year of sixth form, a two-year course in one year . . . . and Further Math in their second year, effectively completing four subjects in all [instead of the required three],” he said.
This was where the problems began as Mason scored a B in Further Math. While she received an A in A level Math, she said it appeared she was scored according to her second year results. Cox scored a C in her second year.
Gollop, who worked with Sir Henry Forde on the case, said: “They will be reimbursed financially according to what they should have received then.”
