SC adjourns hearing of petitions on Grade 5 Scholarship Exam issue

The Supreme Court today (11) adjourned the hearing of petitions seeking an order to re-conduct the 2024 Grade 5 Scholarship Examination, following allegations that three questions in the exam had been leaked.

The petitions were heard before a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices S. Thurairaja and Shiran Gunaratne. However, the hearing was adjourned to December 16, as the three-member bench required to adjudicate the matter was not properly constituted.

The petitions were filed by a group of students who sat for the examination and their parents, expressing concerns over the fairness of the process.

On December 2, the Attorney General (AG) informed the Supreme Court that the Cabinet of Ministers had recommended awarding free marks to all students for the three disputed questions. 

Appearing on behalf of the AG, Solicitor General Viraj Dayaratne stated that the Cabinet of Ministers’ stance was that it is not necessary to re-conduct the examination for this question paper, considering the potential stress it could cause to the students.

On September 20, an investigation was launched by the Department of Examinations after it was alleged that three questions of one of the question papers from the exam had been leaked. Later, the initial investigation report was handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which also launched a separate investigation into the matter.

The investigations had uncovered that only three questions from the exam had been leaked in advance. However, the incident stirred controversy as a group of parents, holding press conferences and staging protests on several occasions, had claimed that the entire question paper had been leaked.

Against this backdrop, the Director of the Planning Division of the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Maharagama and a school teacher, who were arrested by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) over the question paper issue, were remanded until October 22.

The arrested 58-year-old NIE Director was a member of the committee which prepared the 2024 Grade 05 Scholarship Examination paper, and the 49-year-old teacher had been conducting tuition classes for Grade 05 students.

The parents raised the issue with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and as a result, the evaluation of the answer sheets for the scholarship examination was suspended until the investigation was completed.

On October 14, the Commissioner General of Examinations Amith Jayasundara announced that it was decided not to re-conduct the 2024 Grade 05 Scholarship Examination. Furthermore, it had been decided to award free marks to all students for the 03 questions which were alleged to have been leaked.

However in November, the Supreme Court issued an interim order preventing the release of results of the 2024 Grade 5 Scholarship Examination.