Leaving Cert blunder will cost €1m
While the main focus of the State Examinations Commission (SEC), the Department of Education and schools has been to reduce the stress already felt by affected students, the affair will leave Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe and the commission with a massive financial headache.
An education source said the cost can only be estimated at this stage, but it is expected to reach €1m, roughly half of which will be spent on buses for students who ordinarily use the school transport system. That cost will most likely have to be footed directly by the Department of Education which, along with Bus Éireann, assured students that exam period services will run for tomorrow’s rescheduled exams.
The other half of the bill will be the responsibility of the SEC, mostly in payments to 2,000 exam superintendents who must come in to oversee the operation of the around 34,500 higher level and 17,300 ordinary level exams. These contracted staff are paid €117 a day plus travel and subsistence during the exams.
A further €21.21 or €24.22, the lower figure payable to under-18s, will be paid to attendants helping each superintendent, bringing the total direct pay bill to almost €300,000 and school staff will also have to be paid for weekend work.
“At the moment, the focus is to get the papers out and run the exams on Saturday and we will have to deal with the cost aspect later,” an SEC spokesperson said.
The superintendent who gave out the wrong English papers in error on Wednesday morning at St Oliver’s Community College in Drogheda, Co Louth, has been suspended for the rest of the exams and could possibly be refused future appointment to such work.
While the 1998 Education Act sets out criminal offences with sanctions of up to €1,500 and/or six months in jail for offences in relation to the state exams, no such case would be likely here as it would have to be shown that a paper was knowingly given out and it has been generally accepted that this incident was entirely accidental.
It emerged yesterday that the papers were only seen by students for less than a minute, but that the SEC was not notified until almost 4pm on Wednesday. However, the Irish Examiner has also learned that superintendents were given a specific reminder that the two sets of Leaving Certificate papers were wrapped in similar packaging.
The SEC is finalising arrangements for a deferred sitting of English papers for a small number of students from the Jewish community after getting legal advice that asking them to sit an exam on their Sabbath, when their religion prohibits it and it is against their conscience, could have been unconstitutional. All other students will be expected to attend, in line with other timetabled exams.
