The Scholarship List and the Headmaster's Cousin
A higher secondary school has five full scholarships for Class XII students entering tertiary study. Selection is by a composite score: 60% academic marks, 30% means-test, 10% interview. The headmaster chairs the selection committee. After scoring, the fifth and sixth ranked students are separated by 0.4 points. The sixth-ranked student is the headmaster's cousin's daughter. The headmaster discloses the relationship and asks the committee whether he should step aside. One teacher argues that disclosure is enough and that stepping aside would insult the family. Another notes that the interview component was scored by the headmaster himself and that the cousin scored unusually high on it, though within the permitted range. The list must go to the dzongkhag within 48 hours; re-interviewing would delay it.
1. Should the headmaster step aside? Analyse the conflict, the evidence, and the practical constraints.
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Disclosure is necessary but not sufficient. The test is not whether the headmaster feels biased but whether a reasonable observer, knowing the facts, would trust the outcome. Here the observer has two reasons for doubt: a family relationship, and the fact that the headmaster personally scored the component on which his relative did unusually well, with the margin between fifth and sixth being only 0.4 points. That margin is smaller than ordinary interview-scoring noise, so the interview score is plausibly decisive.
He should therefore recuse himself from the final ranking decision, though not necessarily from the whole process. The committee can proceed without re-interviewing: the other members can review the interview score sheets, and if the headmaster's scores for all candidates are excluded, the ranking can be recomputed from the remaining interviewers' scores. If only one interviewer scored the interviews, that is a design flaw and the committee should say so in its report.
The 'insult to the family' argument is not a governance reason. Fairness to the other four candidates and to the sixth-ranked student herself - who should hold a place that is untainted - outweighs family comfort. A tainted award can be revoked later, which is worse for her than a clean second-place outcome.
On timing: 48 hours is enough to recompute scores and write a note explaining the recusal. Delay is not a justification for a compromised process.
2. The committee recomputes and the cousin's daughter now ranks seventh. Her father sends a message asking the headmaster to 'look at the interview marks again.' How should the headmaster respond?
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He should respond briefly, in writing, and without reopening the merits. The message should say: the selection was recomputed by the committee after his recusal; he took no part in the final ranking; the outcome stands; and any grievance should be addressed to the dzongkhag scholarship focal point under the normal review route. He should not explain which scores changed, because that invites a second negotiation and breaches the confidentiality of other candidates.
He should also record the message and his reply and inform the committee chair or dzongkhag focal point, so the exchange is documented before any complaint is filed. This protects him from a later allegation that he intervened quietly.
What he must not do: request a re-interview for one candidate only, ask a colleague to 'check' the marks informally, or hint that the family should appeal. Each of these would convert a closed, defensible process into a reopened, personal one. The principled line is that he has already removed himself, and the appropriate response to a grievance is the formal channel, used by everyone equally.