Students’ results upgrade may be too late
But for the one-in-five students who secured an upgrade the improved grades may have come too little too late to enter the third-level course of their choice, a secondary teacher’s leader warned last night.
Susie Hall said the appeals mechanism must be sped up by the State Examinations Commission (SEC) so students would not have to wait for their final results and possibly risking their first choice third-level place.
The ASTI president said: “The SEC should be cognisant of that danger and make sure that this doesn’t happen.
“I think the third-level institutions should be a little flexible, if there are one or two students who, because of the rechecking, are upgraded.”
The SEC announced 2,082 upgrades were given in 10,305 grades.
Just seven students had their results downgraded.
Higher-level English generated the highest number of upgrades - 309 from 1,998 appeals.
And from 951 higher level geography students who appealed, 250 had their grades improved.
One-in-four students successfully appealed their higher level Irish results - 190 from 767 appeals.
In higher-level chemistry - where the SEC last June admitted a question on the paper had not been covered in the syllabus - 59 of the 403 students’ results were upgrades.
Higher-level history produced the highest ratio of successful appeals: 155 from 451 submitted applications.
And 170 higher-level biology students were given upgrades from the 560 who appealed.
There were upgrades for 139 of the 536 higher-level French students appealing their grades.
In the process of appeals, the work of each candidate is fully remarked and the remarking is performed by a different examiner to the original one.
