Shadee Morrison says she was robbed of her right to choose which university she wanted to attend. (Photo: StacyB)
April 13, 2022
Gov’t needs to deal with transcript nightmare
Ms Shadee Morrison’s story, as reported by this newspaper on Monday, is indeed heartbreaking.
Extremely bright and fully aware that she has a duty to help her fellow human beings, Ms Morrison applied to universities in the US for a scholarship to realise her dream of becoming a doctor.
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But, as she related in our story, her former high school, Westwood — where she was head girl — was lethargic in preparing her transcript, despite being given more than enough time to have it ready for the universities to which she had applied.
However, when she finally received the transcript, after what she said was a long delay, she did not understand how lacking it was until she compared it to her transcript from Hampton School, where she did her sixth-form years.
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“The Westwood transcript was very basic. The document did not include my clubs, my awards, my school and community involvement, nor did it include my CSEC [Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate] results. Most importantly, the grades were not translated for [me] to be internationally competitive,” Ms Morrison said.
As if that were not bad enough, Ms Morrison said when she approached Westwood to have the transcript properly prepared, an official at the school insisted that she would not be changing the document and pointedly asked why she wanted to go to a university abroad, then advised her to register at The University of the West Indies (UWI) instead.
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The upshot is that Ms Morrison, after reapplying to American universities, was not successful as the transcript issue was not resolved and she ended up attending The UWI, pursuing a degree that she simply did not want.
Our story outlines even more of Ms Morrison’s nightmarish experience which, as she put it, robbed her of her right to choose where she wanted to pursue her tertiary education.
Sadly, this is not unique to Ms Morrison, as the experiences of other bright, young Jamaicans were reported by this week’s Sunday Observer.
Dr Dennis Minott, the respected scientist and educator whose A-QuEST programme has, since 1987, been preparing top Jamaican students for colleges abroad, was the man who brought to our attention this issue of school administrators standing in the way of students.
Dr Minott believes that in some of these cases school administrators and other officials are deliberate in their actions. We shudder to think that he may be right, but we can’t blame him for holding that view because he has intimate knowledge of what is taking place at some schools, especially with his A-QuEST students.
Indeed, he related an experience one of his students had with the principal of her school, who was obviously opposed to the student’s desire to study abroad and, in order to frustrate that process, deliberately submitted the student’s transcript 10 months after the due date.
That sort of degenerate behaviour and thinking has no place in our education system. As far as we are aware, such individuals are in the minority. However, the fact that they have been allowed, for more than a decade at least, to blight the future of this country’s children, demands action from the Government.
Dr Minott insists that the State should put in place mechanisms that will streamline how well school records are kept and how those records are delivered to the next stage of the education process. We wholeheartedly agree.
