Stay order issued preventing release of Grade 5 Scholarship exam results

The Supreme Court has issued an interim order preventing the release of results of the 2024 Grade 5 Scholarship Examination.

This order was issued when a Fundamental Rights (FR) petition filed seeking an order preventing the release of the 2024 Grade 05 Scholarship Examination results and the cut-off marks was taken up for consideration today (18).

The petition was taken up for consideration before the three-member Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Preethi Padman Surasena, Achala Vengappuli and Mahinda Samayawardena.

The petitions were filed by the parents of several students who sat for the 2024 Grade 05 Scholarship Examination which was held on September 15, 2024.

The Commissioner General of Examinations, Minister of Education and Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, Secretary of the Ministry of Education, DIG in charge of the Criminal Investigations Department and 11 others have been named as respondents of the relevant petition. 

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.

However on Monday (Oct. 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.