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[B.M. No. 1011. November 14, 2000]

RE: PETITION FOR CORRECTION OF BAR EXAM BOOKLETS IN THE SC, ALCANTARA

EN BANC

Gentlemen:

Quoted hereunder, for your Information, is a resolution of this Court dated NOV 14 2000.

B.M. No. 1011 (Re: Petition for Correction of Bar Exam Booklets in the Supreme Court, Samson S. Alcantara.)

The Court Resolved to (a) NOTE the Compliance with the resolution of 10 October 2000, dated 23 October 2000, filed by the Special Study Group on Bar Examination Reforms and (b) DENY the instant petition for the following reasons:

(i) Although the objective of petitioner, i.e., to ensure that the examiner himself, and not somebody else, check the examination notebooks is laudable, the petition for correction of the Bar Examination booklets in the Supreme Court is impractical as it will slow down the checking of the 4,800 notebooks of the Y2000 Bar Examinations and will place an unjustifiable burden on the Examiner.

(ii) It would contravene the policy of confidentiality adopted by the Court and embodied in the Revised Guidelines appended to the Final Report of the Study Group, reading:

"D.3 Identity of Examiners - The Chairman shall keep the identity of the examiners strictly confidential. The examiners themselves shall keep their designations as examiners strictly confidential. Members of their families shall be held to the same degree of confidentiality. Even the officials of the Court, including the Bar Confidant, should not know any of the examiners' identities; nor should the examiners know one another. Their respective identities will be disclosed to the Bar Confidant only after each examination is administered, and to the public only after official release of the examination results.

(iii) Corollarily, the security of the examination notebooks will be compromised as their movement to and from the Court can easily be monitored by interested parties, thereby also affecting the confidentiality of the process. Thus, the Revised Guidelines further provides:

"D.4 Strict confidentiality - The rule of strict confidentiality shall also be observed in the delivery and retrieval of examination notebooks, correction, grading and handling of the results of the Bar Examinations before the authorized decoding and date of release."

(iv) Correcting the examination booklets in any place other than the choice of the examiners assumes that the process can be confined to certain periods of the day. The truth is that correction is a 24-hour task that does not follow the rising and the setting of the sun. If he is to meet the deadline in the submission of grades, an examiner has to work round-the-clock, turning night into day, in surroundings where he is most comfortable. Moreover, he can ill afford to spend time going to and from the Court just to work during regular office hours.

(v) Correction of notebooks by the examiner personally is specifically enjoined in the Revised Guidelines, thus:

C.. Qualifications and Disqualifications of Examiners

1. Qualifications

1.5 Capacity to check test papers personally and on time."

(vi) During the Chairmanship of the late Chief Justice Fred Ruiz Castro in 1974, the Court made public the identity of the examiners. This change was short-lived, however, and the Court reverted to the policy of strict confidentiality in succeeding years."

Mendoza, J., on leave, abroad.

Very truly yours,

LUZVIMINDA D. PUNO

Clerk of Court�

(Sgd.) MA. LUISA D. VILLARAMA

Asst. Clerk of Court

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