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Nine more students and a school’s governing board have issued Superior Court proceedings challenging the 2020 Leaving Cert calculated grading system.
A Superior Court judge has said a sample case will be heard next month if legal teams agree on what the lead case should be.
Another case, taken by a Leaving Cert 2019 student has been withdrawn.
One of the cases involves the Board of Trustees of St Kilian’s German School in Dublin and eight of its students, who claim that the standardization model led to an “extraordinary” degradation of results in German and other subjects there.
Freddy Sherry, a Leaving Cert student at Belvedere College in Dublin, has taken another case.
It claims that the “interference” of the Minister of Education last August with the work of the Independent Steering Committee on Calculated Grades, by ordering it not to rely on previous school data or historical school records in the standardization process, led to it being downgraded. unfairly by 55 points on his Leaving Cert this year.
The first case was taken last week by Aine Finnegan of Fairview in Dublin, who says the standardization process meant she was unfairly lost a place in Medicine at Trinity College Dublin by two points.
All three cases were brought up before Judge Charles Meenan, who was asked to set a date for the hearing in late October.
The judge said he could only set a hearing date in October if the lawyers for the three cases agreed on what the lead case might be.
Unless this was done, you could not set a hearing date before the end of the year.
The judge has previously said that the Covid pandemic had triggered a backlog of cases that were waiting to be heard and that it would not be possible to hear several cases related to the 2020 Exit Certificate.
Senior attorney Brian Kennedy, from the Minister of Education and Skills, the Minister of Continuing and Higher Education and the State, previously said that the cases involved a “systemic” challenge to the computed grades process and that they would need at least four weeks to prepare the opposition. documents.
Feichín McDonagh SC for the applicants, said the cases were not a systemic attack on the calculated ratings but referred to a ministerial decision last August to “interfere” in that process in response to some criticism in the public discourse.
In the case of St Kilian, it is stated that the school consistently achieves a high number of H1 and H2 in Leaving Certificate German.
In an affidavit, Principal Alice Lynch said it was “impossible to reconcile” that background with the calculated grades that St Kilian students actually receive.
One student had her school’s estimated grade reduced from 90% to an H3, while another student had her grade lowered from H2 to H4 and denied a CAO place as she did not have the German requirement. H3 for the TCD course.
The grading system calculated was “inherently flawed” and did not take into account the proven level of German academic performance of students at the school the court heard from.
In the case of Mr. Sherry, of Newtown, Celbridge, Co Kildare, he said, although Belvedere College does not have a formal transmission of classes, it says he was in the “fastest” Leaving Cert classes in four subjects, in addition to being in the only class in Latin, and as a result, he expected the students in most of his classes to have had a high number of H1 and H2 grades.
He had constantly studied for his Leaving Cert until May 8, when the exam’s cancellation and its replacement with a calculated grade system was announced.
He was “hugely disappointed” that the total CAO points estimated by his teachers of 542 for him dropped to 487 under the process.
It had been based on guidelines published on May 20 for students and schools that explicitly stated that the calculated scores would reflect standards that were correctly aligned between schools and with a national standard.
The process has not been based on previous school data or national historical data during the standardization process and that was announced by the Minister at a press conference on September 1, 2020.
Aine Finnegan, who studied for her Leaving Cert at the paid Institute of Education in Dublin, missed a place in Medicine at TCD by two points after three of her calculated grades were lowered, also alleging injustice in the process.
A student who obtained the Bachelor’s Certificate in 2019 has withdrawn her case after securing a place in the course of her choice.
Martha Woods, who claimed that she had been treated unfairly and prevented from pursuing a career in dentistry, withdrew her case because she has since secured a place to study dentistry at UCC.
When her case went to court last week, her attorneys said she was treated unfairly because of this year’s grade inflation in the calculated grade system.
They said steps should have been taken to correct the imbalance of students from previous years who were “placed in the same basket” as those who benefited from 4.4% grade level inflation.
However, today his lawyers told the court that he was withdrawing his case after receiving a dentistry position at UCC.
Judge Meenan said he was pleased with the result and wished Ms. Woods every success in college and in her career.
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