[ad_1]
STUDENTS WHO MISSED college courses due to error in calculated grades have now been offered their spots.
Higher Education Minister Simon Harris said the offers had come out Thursday morning.
There were 424 students who were identified by the CAO as having missed the desired college course due to incorrectly being awarded a lower grade.
They have now been offered a place in the course chosen for the current academic year.
Minister Harris said: “I promised last week to move mountains to ensure that any student who requires an additional spot as a result of calculated grades gets that spot and gets it this academic year.
“I am delighted to inform the committee that this happened.
“That all students who had an error in their calculated grades detected by the CAO have now been offered a spot this morning.”
Harris again apologized for the mistakes, which affected 6,500 initial Leaving Cert students, 6,100 of whom have since scored higher.
The CAO identified that 424 of those students required new offerings.
Harris said he was aware that the 2020 class had been through a “terribly difficult year.”
Harris made the remarks in the higher education committee today and insisted the government would learn from its mistakes.
He said: “The idea that we are not stopping to review and learn in relation to this year’s calculated grades would seem a little strange to me.
“I’m pretty sure that there will be an opening in the government that whatever lessons need to be learned is learned.
“This was done in real time, in crisis mode.
“I think people worked in good faith.
“But it would be very stupid not to stop and review it and see what went well, what did not go well, what needs improvement.
“We have to try to make sure we don’t create a bubble effect next year.
“I need to try to make sure I maximize the number of spots available for the class of 2021.”
No news is bad news
Support the magazine
your contributions help us continue to deliver the stories that are important to you
Support us now
Sinn Fein Senator Rose Conway-Walsh raised the fact that some students had been expelled from their seats because others were wrongly given higher grades.
But Harris said these students would not see their results downgraded.
“We have a long-standing precedent in this country, decades old, that no one is demoted.
“Aside from rerunning the entire process, which I don’t think anyone would advocate, there’s no way to determine the impact of that.
“The Government, faced with a pandemic, thought that this was the fairest way of doing things. It’s perfect, right?
“But this was done in crisis mode, in a pandemic.
“I am encouraged that more students than ever have university places, have their first choice.”
[ad_2]