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Some 6,500 Leaving Cert students received a lower grade than they should have received, and that grade will rise, Education Minister Norma Foley confirmed.
However, the total number of students affected by two errors found in the Leaving Certificate’s grading system code will not be confirmed until the next few days, Ms. Foley said.
Affected students will have their grades increased and no student will have a reduced grade. Corrections for most students relate to one subject, and a smaller number get an update in more than one subject.
He said the government will work with higher education institutions to ensure that students affected by the grading controversy do not miss out on university places.
The Department of Education found two errors in the computed grade process that were part of 50,000 lines of code.
The Department said errors were being rectified and independent checks were being carried out.
The Education Department will contact students who will receive improved grades as soon as all verifications are completed.
“When the revised scores are issued, the CAO and higher education institutions will establish which students who received corrected scores would have been eligible for a higher preference offering in previous rounds of the CAO process,” the department said in a statement.
The Government will work with the CAO and universities to determine how these students can be made easier to begin a course that would otherwise have been offered to them.
The Minister of Education apologized for the mistakes. “I want to say how sorry I am that this happened.
“My immediate priority is to correct mistakes and their consequences so that students get the correct grades.
“That is happening right now and the next steps will be followed quickly.
“Following my instructions, the Department of Education and Skills has commissioned independent international experts to review aspects of the Calculated Grades System to provide further assurance to me and students.
“I will provide full details on the bugs, how they are being addressed, and rating updates as soon as I can.”
The bug is believed to have first come to light a few days ago and was being investigated before it was raised today by Labor Party leader Alan Kelly in the Dáil.
Initial investigations at the Department of Education will only have made a difference for a minority of students as to whether or not they received their first choice from CAO.
It is understood that the CAO has agreed to treat the new grades as if they were successful appeals, and an attempt will be made to offer offers in the next round of the CAO to those students for whom it would have made a difference.
The government is likely to put pressure on universities to provide the additional seats needed to ensure that affected students do not lose out due to the Department’s mistakes.
What are the mistakes?
According to the Department, two errors have been discovered in the same part of the coding used to implement the standardization process.
The first error was in a single line of code programmed by the Department’s external contractor, Polymetrika International Inc.
The error affected the way the candidates’ Junior Cycle results were included in the standardization process.
The aggregated Junior cycle results of students in Irish, English and Mathematics were intended to be included in the data used by the national standardization process, along with their other two best subjects. The error had the effect that the students’ results in Irish, English and mathematics were combined with their other two weaker subjects in the standardization process.
The effect of this error has been that, in some subjects, some candidates received lower marks than they should have been and some received higher marks.
Polymetrika discovered the error and reported it to the Department immediately. Since then they have fixed the code snippet.
The Department of Education and Skills found the second error when conducting checks related to the rectification of the first error. This error was contained in the same section of the code programmed by the Department’s external contractor, Polymetrika.
The second error, which was also related to the way in which the results of the Junior Cycle of the candidates were included in the national standardization process, was that the results of the Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) subject of the Junior Cycle were included in the data that were being used. by the model.
The Department of Education and Skills checks found that the course results had been included by mistake. It was incorrect, since in line with the design of the calculated grades process, this subject should not have been included in the data used by the model.
Taoiseach
Taoiseach Micheál Martin previously told the Dáil that the Department of Education has found two errors in the Leaving Certificate’s grading system.
“It will result in updates for a large number of students,” he said.
Mr. Martin stressed that there would be a completely independent external evaluation of the process, which he said was a technical problem linked to coding.
A government source said the errors are related to coding problems in the processing of calculated grades and may have led to some students being incorrectly graduated by as much as 10 percentage points.
The source said every effort will be made to ensure that students who earn a higher preferred CAO course on foot from an upgrade can take a spot in the current academic year.
University sources said that this will be very difficult in the case of high demand courses such as Dentistry and Medicine that have been assigned all the places. The tertiary sector and the CAO were briefed on the matter on Wednesday afternoon.
It is understood that the errors came to light last Friday. An independent team was hired to analyze the process of calculated ratings to determine the full extent of the errors, according to the sources.
The revelation that mistakes may have affected the results of thousands of Leaving Cert candidates has shaken confidence in the integrity of the calculated ratings process. Many students have complained that they were unfairly demoted, especially students from schools with a strong record of achievement.
The Taoiseach made the comments in response to Labor leader Alan Kelly, who said the Department of Education has “cut to the chase” about students appealing the results of their calculated grades.
Mr. Martin said the priority was to first inform students that grades may have changed as a result of the error.
He said Ms. Foley will discuss what happened, the steps taken to rectify that, the review of that process and the independent external evaluation, and above all, he added, to “alleviate as much anxiety as possible in relation to the students themselves.” .
Labor education spokesman Aodhan Ó Riordain said it is extraordinary that party spokesmen have not received information on this issue.
Sinn Féin education spokesperson Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire asked that students who had been demoted be upgraded.
Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae said that the government allowing this to happen “is absolutely disgraceful.”
Speaking later during Taoiseach’s questions, Mr. Martin said: “I understand that the department would have been alerted to this by the Polimetrica company who discovered the error in the code initially.”
Martin said that Polimétrica was appointed to provide outside expertise when the decision to go the calculated rating route was made because the department had no coding experience. “The error appears to have been in the coding,” he said.
The department “encountered a second error while conducting checks related to rectification of the first error and the department was very eager to resolve all issues and fully understand what was involved here before going public to make sure it can be resolved. . integral in its presentation to the students and all those involved ”.
“All students registered in the student portal for calculated grades will receive communication from the department,” he said.
“Since then, the department has been correcting the code. Now it is working as planned ”and they were satisfied that there were no more errors.
An independent US company, Education and Testing Services, a non-profit organization specializing in educational measurement, has been contracted to review the entire system.
The Taoiseach said that what happened was very regrettable and he knew it would cause further alarm and concern. The government was considering the provision of additional venues and all of that had to be resolved, he said.
Kelly described it as an “absolute mistake” and said that if it had been any other government, it would have been brought down. He said that if he hadn’t raised the issue, they wouldn’t have been treating it.
Kelly said there were students who were taking courses and they wondered if they would still be in them next week. The minister’s statement would like to be an “extraordinary response,” Kelly said, adding that students who are already in courses cannot be penalized or demoted. “That can’t happen.”
He said the ramifications for students already in the courses were “huge.”
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, who asked when the Taoiseach first heard about the mistakes, said she needed to give absolute guarantees that there were no more mistakes.
The President of the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI), Ann Piggot, told RTÉ Radio’s News at One that teachers had committed to the Leaving Certificate calculated grade system “as a last resort”.
ASTI members would have preferred the Leaving Cert exam to have been carried out, as it was “always very fair” and they had confidence in that system. It has been a long and difficult process to organize this year’s Leaving Cert.
Mrs. Piggott was also surprised that there were errors in the calculated grading system.
On RTÉ News at One, Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys said the priority will be to inform students whose grades were affected by failure with the calculated log grades from the Leaving Certificate.
“Obviously this is a huge company. If there are problems, we will fix them. ”
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