More non-teachers among fewer Leaving examiners
Nearly 20 non-teachers marked Leaving Certificate papers this summer as the State Examinations Commission (SEC) continues to have trouble getting qualified teachers for the work.
While they make up just over 1% of all examiners, the number has nearly doubled from 10 to 19 since last year, and is up from five in 2014.
The vast majority of non-teachers hired by the SEC each year to mark Leaving Certificate students’ work have a qualification in a subject relevant to the one they correct, and are on college courses to become a teacher. The number of such trainee teachers used for this year’s Leaving Certificate was 17, up from eight a year ago.
But this year, as in each of the previous four years, two people who are not training as teachers have had to be hired, although they do have a qualification in the relevant subject.
The increased use of non-teachers to mark the State exams is a direct result of the difficulty facing the SEC getting working or retired teachers to do the job.
The numbers doing the traditional Leaving Certificate were down around 2% to 54,440 this year. But the number of examiners being paid to correct them is down by 72, or 4%, from 1,724 a year ago to 1,652. This is 5% fewer than in 2014, when very similar numbers of students’ did the exams.
While figures for Junior Certificate examiners this year are not yet available, the Irish Examiner reported in June that more than one-in-10 people who corrected younger State exam candidates work in 2017 were not qualified teachers. Although the vast majority of those 200-plus examiners were on courses with teaching practice elements, nearly 40 had a relevant qualification but not in teaching.
The SEC said it prioritises qualified teachers to correct exams but it uses a small proportion every year who do not have a teaching qualification, but who have a qualification in the subject concerned. It said rigorous standards and high-quality marking are assured through detailed examiner training and monitoring of each examiner’s work by experienced colleagues.
Students who got their Leaving Certificate results on Wednesday account for more than 46,000 of the 77,000 people seeking entry to third-level courses from the Central Applications Office (CAO) this year. CAO will fill most of the 47,000 places on those courses with its Round 1 offers on Monday.
