Exam body under fire as ship question goes off course

The State Examinations Commission (SEC) is under fire for a Leaving Certificate maths mistake that may have cost thousands of students valuable time.

The higher level trigonometry question showed a triangle to mark a ship’s journey, but the wrong value was given for one of the angles. The Irish version showed no value for this angle, but students were told in a note read by supervisors to insert the same 36° that appeared for the rest of the estimated 13,000 who sat the exam.

While different methods were possible to answer the questions, those who used the incorrect angle may have been confused when verifying their answers.

I feel sorry for any higher maths students after that mistake in the paper 2day #gladidontdoit

— Maura O'Sullivan (@Maura_OS) June 10, 2013

The SEC said it regrets the error on the question, worth about 5% of total marks, but that the impact will be taken into account in the final marking scheme.

However, Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland maths spokeswoman Elaine Devlin said that could not measure how some students may have spent 20 minutes figuring out what was wrong. She said that “an error like this seems negligent”.

Junior minister Sean Sherlock, who oversees implementation of the Project Maths syllabus, said he was confident the SEC’s experience would allow proper account to be taken of any problems.

The SEC also apologised last night that a Junior Certificate CSPE question included outdated information on the Referendum Commission.