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A Dublin school that focuses on teaching German has expressed shock at the lower-than-expected grades awarded to its students in this year’s Leaving Cert Calculated Grades process.
14% of Leaving Certificate students at St Kilian’s Deutsche Schule received H1 grades in German this year, compared to 41% last year.
Schools said they expected about half of their students to receive an H1.
The fee school serves students from kindergarten through elementary and second level.
German is taught from kindergarten.
Principal Alice Lynch told RTÉ News that the “vast majority” of her students would have a strong connection to Germany, many have German parents and others would have lived in the country in the past.
The school has written to the Department of Education to consult the notes.
Ms. Lynch said the school had objective data attesting to the strength of its students in the language and supporting the 19 H1 scores given to students on the estimated grades obtained by their teachers.
In all but 6 cases, those scores were downgraded by the standardization process carried out by the Department of Education as part of the calculated scores process.
He said that most of the school’s Leaving Certificate students had taken and passed a German exam, the ‘Spracht Diploma Level 2, which was significantly more advanced than the higher level Leaving Certificate in German.
Two native German students have expressed dismay that they have not received H1 grades.
Hugo Heisterkamp and Louis Murphy have a German father. Louis Murphy told RTÉ News that as a child he spoke German before speaking English.
Her mother Katrin Elzmann told RTÉ News that she was totally shocked.
“In my opinion, you can’t speak German better than Louis,” he said.
“He speaks German like a German. Nobody would know that he isn’t. So obviously it’s very disappointing.”
RTÉ News has discussed the matter with the Department of Education and is awaiting a response.
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