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GRADES GIVEN To students who were higher than they should have been due to errors in the Leaving Certificate’s grading system may have meant that students who scored lower by mistake were lost in college places.
Education Minister Norma Foley addressed the Dáil tonight after it was announced yesterday that two coding errors were identified in the calculated grade system, meaning that thousands of students received at least one result one grade less than what they should.
When asked by Mick Barry TD how many students had received a higher grade than they should have received due to the error, Foley said that 6,500 students had received a lower grade than they should have, so “there’s a good chance that we’re speaking of a similar number ”of students who received a higher grade than they should have.
Barry said that “there must be students who applied for courses who would have obtained their courses if that mistake had not been made and who were expelled from their courses.”
In response, Foley said that “there are students who have benefited and whose grades have increased, and those students will maintain those grades and will not be demoted.”
In response to further questions from Barry about whether higher grades given to students by mistake had expelled students who had received lower grades by mistake, Foley accepted that the situation was “very possible.”
“As for whether there might have been a problem for some students getting places that they wouldn’t have gotten if the system had been the other way, that’s absolutely very possible,” Foley said.
Foley told the Dáil that students who should receive a higher CAO offer after correction of errors in the calculated grade system “will receive this offer, or a deferred offer as soon as possible.”
Students who postpone an offer to next year but complete the first year of a different course that have already started this year will remain eligible for the free fee scheme, the minister said.
The Department of Education, which has already investigated the errors, has now appointed an external body called the Educational Testing Service to review the code and “provide an independent expert opinion on the adequacy of the coding.”
Foley said the ETS analysis could be completed “as soon as tomorrow.”
“From then on, I would like things to move as quickly as possible” regarding the grade correction and offers for students had been affected, Foley said.
Students and parents have made at least 200 calls to a helpline following the announcement of the errors.
Foley told the Dáil that “approximately 200 calls” were received by a dedicated helpline set up for students at the Department of Education yesterday afternoon and evening after the bug was revealed.
The calculated grading system was intended to take into account a student’s Junior Certificate results in English, mathematics, Irish, and their top two non-core subjects at an aggregated class level.
However, he used his two worst supplementary subjects instead.
It was also intended to exclude the subject Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) from the system, but it was included by mistake.
Foley apologized for the distress caused to the students and their families after the mistakes.
He described it as a “difficult day” for the students and said the announcement had “generated anxiety and concern.”
“These are mistakes that shouldn’t have happened,” Foley said.
Polymetrika International, the company that developed the code for the calculated grade system, identified the first error related to including the worst non-essential subjects from students’ Junior Certificate instead of the best two, on Tuesday last week.
The second error was later identified when the first error led to an internal review of the system.
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Students are expected to be contacted by text message to find out if they were affected by the bug or not. Affected students will receive new interim results on the calculated grade portal.
Polymetrika International charged € 91,500 above the agreed cost due to a daily charge of € 1,100 for days worked outside the contract.
The Department of Education said there was “not enough time to run through a normal and complete acquisition process” after the decision was made to implement a calculated grade system in place of the traditional Leaving Certificate exams.
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