Private school criticises 'endemic flaws' in calculated grades as 96% of its students see marks cut

The Institute of Education, which had more than 800 Leaving Cert students this year, says 96% of their students had a grade reduced in the calculated grades process. File Picture.

One of the country's largest private schools has called for changes to this year's Leaving Cert appeals process after 96% of its students had a grade reduced due to what it describes as "endemic flaws" with calculated grades. 

The Institute of Education, which had more than 800 Leaving Cert students this year, said it has discovered what it believes to be "fundamental bias" in the methodology used to assign calculated grades to students. This follows an analysis carried out by data analytics firm Krisolis.  

Hundreds of the school's students will miss out on their chosen careers when the CAO offers are made tomorrow due to national grade inflation. That's according to Yvonne O'Toole, the principal of the school. 

"We have calculated that had the change to our student grades been limited to 17% [the number of grades reduced nationally] then the resulting average decrease in points would have been 11 points. In fact, our students have seen on average a 30 points drop, with some as high as a 77 points drop.“

The school believes the model used by the department is "fundamentally flawed" following its analysis, by introducing material bias at either end of the grade distribution. 

"This has amplified the impact on our students who perform at the upper end of the achievement scale." 

The school believes the standardisation process negatively impacted it due to its size, and that the use of the legacy Junior Certificate data also adversely impacted its students.

Last year, the national H1 rate in French was 6.6%, while at the Institute of Education, it was 27%. This year, the national average H1 rate in the subject rose to 7.7%, a proportionate increase of 17%. However, it fell to 17.9% in the school. 

Overall, it also experienced reductions in the numbers of H1 grades in Applied Maths and Physics, which the school has a good track record in previous Leaving Cert exams. 

The school has now written to the Taoiseach asking for an appeals system that allows calculated grades to be challenged. 

"The current appeals process is meaningless, only allowing a student to appeal a clerical error, not their grades." 

At the time of going to print, the Department of Education had not responded to a request for comment. 

However, calculated grades have repeatedly been described as the "fairest possible solution" following the cancellation of this summer's exams. 

According to the department, the national standardisation process operated on the premise that the school estimates only be adjusted through where there was credible statistical evidence to justify it.