Minister says there are penalties associated with Polymetrika’s calculated grade contract

EDUCATION MINISTER NORMA Foley said there are penalties associated with the contract from Polymetrika International, the company that developed the calculated Exit Certificate code.

At a press conference with the minister yesterday it was confirmed that the “original value” of the contract with the Canadian company was € 75,000.

An official from the Department of Education said that “the expenditure to date” is € 160,000.

Not all expenses fall on the department, but also on the State Examinations Commission, as the contract was originally placed on “contingency planning days” in April, an official said.

Asked about the sanctions, the minister said TheJournal.ie that “there are penalties in connection with this … absolutely.”

However, the government’s approach “is much more than ensuring that the error that has occurred is corrected, which is the main concern of the students.”

The department has said that it is not focusing on what is owed to the government in relation to the code purchased by the state, and one official said that “we are not looking at those issues yet.”

“In terms of looking at the penalties or looking at the contract,” one official said the focus now is on the students and their grades.

It emerged yesterday that two errors were found in the code responsible for calculating grades for this year’s Leaving Cert students.

It is estimated that the errors affected the grades of approximately 6,500 students.

Education Minister Norma Foley said that those who received a higher rating “will not be affected in any way” and that those who were rated “will regain their proper rating.”

The identified error was in the code provided by Polymetrika International, Foley said yesterday.

Reporters were told that the task force in the department had been looking for alternatives to the certificate of abandonment since the onset of the pandemic when it became clear that state tests might not go ahead. On May 8, a decision on the implementation of the calculated ratings was agreed, the minister said.

Since then, an independent steering committee, an international external reviewer, Dr. Janet Browne of the Scottish Qualifications Authority and the Education Research Center (ERS) have been part of the oversight of the plan.

The ERS carried out checks, but “did sampling checks of the coding,” according to the minister, who said there were “several layers of validation checks.”

The September report from the National Standards Group to the Independent Steering Committee and the Program Board notes that more than 40 variants of the model were tested.

It also notes that Dr. Kentaro Yamamoto was appointed as technical advisor to provide a “level of contingency coverage for Polymetrika” on the standardization process and to provide expert advice and oversight regarding the integrity of the data.

At yesterday’s press conference, it was confirmed that the model and code were being developed between May and August, with officials saying that it would have been “impossible” to run a full code and fact check.

The calculated rating code was “new” and “not bought on the market,” an official said.