Dyslexic pupil sues govt for negligence over UPSR

A 13-year-old boy with dyslexia has filed a suit against the director of the Malaysian Examinations Board and the government for negligence in the handling of this year's Primary School Achievement Test (UPSR) examination papers, some of which he had to resit.

K. Mangala Bhavani filed the suit on behalf of the pupil, Ananda Krishnan Menon, at the Civil High Court registry on Oct 13 through the legal firm of Messrs Rajadevan & Associates.

The case has been fixed for case management on Nov 12.

In the statement of claim, Ananda Krishnan, a pupil of Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Tun Dr Ismail 2, said the defendants had failed to implement a safe system to ensure there was no leak of the examination question papers.

He also said that the defendants failed to supervise employees and their agents - lawful representatives - to ensure that the question papers did not leak from the beginning of the process of preparing the questions till the process of distributing the question papers to all schools in Malaysia.

The UPSR examination was scheduled for Sept 9 to 11 but, due to the leak, pupils had to resit the Science, English, Mathematics and Tamil Language papers on Sept 30 and Oct 9.

Ananda Krishnan claimed that he was a dyslexic child with special needs and had suffered stress, undue pressure and frustration and was demotivated to face a resit of the UPSR examination.

He is seeking special damages, general damages and costs of the suit.