Students should view answer sheets before appealing grades

Students who are considering an appeal against one or more grades they receive today are strongly advised to arrange to view their answer sheets.

Higher-level scripts in most subjects are sent back to every school by the State Examinations Commission (SEC) and schools have forms that anybody wishing to appeal a result must fill in to organise a viewing.

This form must be completed and returned to the school by next Tuesday,Aug 21.

The organising superintendent appointed by the SEC to each school will assign students a viewing session the following week on either Friday evening,Aug 31 or Saturday, Sept 1 (either between 9am and 12pm or from 2pm to 5pm).

Only the scripts from written exams can be viewed and a student can bring one other person to the viewing session, usually the subject teacher, who would be best equipped to interpret the marks against the marking scheme, which will also be available.

The SEC copies some scripts before sending out originals for viewing, and the likes of pens, pencils, mobile phones, cameras, or other recording devices cannot be taken into the viewing centre for security reasons.

While viewing a script is not required before making an appeal, it allows candidates to have a better idea of the situation before sending off the appeal and the €40 fee (or €15.50 in the case of Leaving Certificate Applied), which is refundable if an appeal is successful.

Appeal applications, which are to include a form available from schools or sent out personally to external candidates, must be with the SEC by Sept 5 and should be returned to schools early the day before at the latest.

An appeal examiner re-marks any appealed scripts and, in the case of subjects involving practical or project work, he or she may visit the school to re-mark work stored there.

Being only a few marks short of the next grade — bearing in mind that some subjects are marked out of several hundred — does not mean it is likely that an upgrade will be awarded.

The SEC should notify the outcomes of all appeals to students by mid-October.

Last year, 5,812 people appealed 10,142 grades, meaning most who made an appeal contested their result in at least two subjects.

Those appeals resulted in 1,932 upgrades, equivalent to 0.5% of all grades awarded being corrected, although four grades were downgraded following appeal.

Higher-level English and biology accounted for the biggest number of appeals last year (1,706 and 1,197, respectively).

The biggest upgrade rate was in agricultural science, in which 335 of the 5,287 higher-level grades were appealed, leading to 99 or 1.9% of all results being upgraded.

In contrast, none of the 41 higher-level religious education appeals succeeded.

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