State Examinations Commission to consider impact of exam appeal ruling
The board of the State Examinations Commission (SEC) will today consider the implications of the High Court ruling in which its Leaving Certificate appeals system was strongly criticised.
While a full judgment is not due until a later date, High Court Justice Richard Humphreys said the situation that brought a distressed 18-year-old student before him showed the Leaving Certificate appeals system is not fit for purpose.
Co Wexford student Rebecca Carter should be told today if the re-check of her Leaving Certificate business exam will result in an upgrade and a college place.
The court directed the SEC to have her paper re-examined by noon today and the result notified to University College Dublin two hours later.
It, in turn, will contact the Central Applications Office (CAO), who must notify Ms Carter by 5pm today if she is being offered a place on the veterinary medicine degree course for which she fell just one CAO point short before her appeal.
The college told Ms Carter that, while an appeal result would ordinarily be notified to it by October 12, it could only hold a place on the veterinary medicine course until the end of this month.
As well as the specifics of this case, the judge said the situation which arose should not be repeated next year.
The SEC would only say after the direction of the High Court that it noted what it described as a “significant judgement”.
It has convened an unscheduled meeting of its board to consider the implications.
However, it is uncertain and unlikely that any major decisions can be made, particularly without assessment of any necessary resources that might be required to fast-track the checking of exam papers where an upgrade might directly affect a student’s entitlement to access a college course.
Last year, around 1,400 out of 5,600 students who appealed got an upgrade, but the outcomes are not notified to all applicants until the second week of October.
For some of the 300-plus people entitled as a result to a college offer, it may be too late into the course and the place may have to be deferred for a year.
The judge had noted midweek that it takes 40 days after the early September closing date for appeals for more than 9,000 appeals to be assessed by 400 examiners.
In the Dáil yesterday, Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty described the case as very regrettable and said the system would be reviewed.
The minister said she or the Government could not stand over a situation where the applicant would have to defer her college place to next year if she had not gone to the High Court.
Fianna Fáil’s Dara Calleary said the case highlighted deficiencies in the exam marking process.
He said it was extraordinary the issue could have been rectified outside the normal appeals process if the totting error was on the front cover of the exam script, but had to go through the formal system because it happened inside the exam paper.
No simple solutions to tackling Leaving Certificate appeal delays
Each year, the results issued to more than 55,000 Leaving Certificate students are provisional only.
This is because they are open to amendment, mainly, in cases where a student applies to have their performance in one or more grades remarked.
Last year, such appeals were lodged by 5,616 students in respect of 9,810 grades, as a candidate is open to appeal more than one subject.
Last year, there were 1,446 upgrades to a mark given in August, although the number of students involved may be fewer if some with two or more appeals were successful in more than one.
No, an upgrade and the subsequent increase in Central Applications Office (CAO) points might not bring a college applicant over the line with the points needed for a course higher on their application than a course for which they were already offered a place.
Last year, following the issue of appeal results in October, the CAO issued offers to more than 300 students.
However, as courses may already be running up to six weeks, or have tight limits on student numbers because of clinical placements or other factors, colleges sometimes tell students they must defer their place for a year.
Firstly, the closing date for appeals was Wednesday, September 5 — three weeks after students received their provisional results.
But this in line with the timeframe of other years.
To facilitate decisions on whether to appeal a grade, students first have a chance to physically view their exam script or other written material submitted as part of their work in a particular subject.
They can be accompanied by one person under strict rules about access.
But to allow for this, the SEC must provide for the transfer of written scripts back to schools.
More than 530,000 papers are ready to be transmitted to schools, but the SEC must wait until it knows which students’ papers in individual subjects need to be reviewed.
Applications for scripts to be viewed must be made through schools on the Tuesday after Leaving Certificate results are received.
This is the day after the CAO issues first-round offers, when students have a clearer idea if they are short of the points needed for a particular course and, if so, by how many points.
Students were given appointments this year on Friday, August 31, and Saturday, September 1 — 10 and 11 days after the closing date for script viewing applications.
They then have until the following Wednesday to have an appeal submitted and received by the SEC.
A facility already exists for circumstances where a calculation error has been found on an exam script, but this relates specifically to marks written on the front page of each paper.
This is where the examiner marking it brings forward the marks from each question in a section to add them up to a total that determines a student’s grade.
If this is brought to the immediate attention of the SEC, it can be reviewed outside the formal appeals process.
This system operates only for the purpose of putting right an error transcribing the overall mark from the answer-book to the marking sheet, or an error keying the mark from the marking sheet onto the exams database in the SEC.
The SEC says that any issue of interpretation, such as disallowed questions, computation of marks, the application of the marking scheme, and/or claims that the work has not been fully marked can only be resolved through the formal process and review of the marking scheme’s application by an appeal examiner.
In the High Court on Wednesday, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys noted that it took 40 days after the closing date for more than 9,000 appeals to be assessed by 400 examiners, yet 1,700 examiners can mark almost 390,000 papers in 54 days to get the main Leaving Certificate results out in mid-August.
However, there is a big difference, in that the marking work is done almost entirely by teachers who are in full-time employment in schools.
By the time appealed exams are being distributed for re-checking, the examiners hired by the SEC are back at work during the day, whereas they are on summer holidays when the work is done between June and August.
This is not as easy as it sounds. The SEC has had a growing problem finding enough teachers to mark State exams in recent years, with calls being made through to the end of June for people to correct students’ work in some subjects.
In some instances, people who are not qualified to teach the subject have had to be recruited, although this is mainly at Junior Certificate level, and the majority of them do have a college qualification in the subject even if they are not a teacher.
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland and Teachers’ Union of Ireland have lodged a claim for a 30% increase in the rates payable for the work, saying the crisis is due to inadequate pay and rising workloads as more people drop out.
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