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THE MINISTER OF Education failed to meet its commitments to keep the 2020 Certificate of Completion fair, accurate, and comparable to results from other years by not including historical data from the school in the calculated grading process, the Superior Court has heard.
The claim was made by attorneys on the first day of the main challenge hearing filed by a Leaving Cert student against the calculated grades process and the award of college places for 2020.
Today, Feichín McDonagh SC of Freddie Sherry, said that the Minister had “ruled out” her commitment to keep the grade estimation process fair by choosing not to include historical data on the school’s past performance as part of the process used to estimate The qualifications.
The minister’s decision, the lawyer added, had also resulted in inflated ratings and had breached a second commitment to make 2020 results comparable to past and future years, the lawyer said.
The lawyer said that the process adopted by the Minister when the decision not to take the Bachelor’s Certificate exams in 2020 was neither panicky nor rushed.
Considerable expert opinion was obtained on the best way to fairly and accurately evaluate the calculated ratings.
The lawyer said that after what was a “top-down intervention” by the Minister, it was decided not to include historical data on the performance of schools in previous years when it came to evaluating grades.
There was no requirement to exclude that data as part of the rating evaluation process, the attorney said.
Before the intervention, the lawyer said that the system had already considered how to rate good students capable of obtaining the best grades who were in a school whose students had not performed well in previous years’ exams.
Also, the system used to calculate ratings in Ireland was different from those used in the UK, where there was widespread criticism after thousands of results were downgraded to reduce rating inflation.
The lawyer said that there was a certain “opacity” about the reasons why the Minister decided, on August 21, to intervene in relation to the use of historical school data when evaluating grades.
This would be something that would be addressed during the cross-examination of witnesses for the minister, the lawyer said.
In her opening, the lawyer compared the situation created by the minister as a “scrambled egg of complex proportions” that all the data from the experts showed should be “scrambled differently before the minister takes out her whisk.”
Sherry, who completed her Leaving at Belvedere College, Dublin. is the test case for approximately 50 challenges from other Leaving Cert students against the calculated grade process.
In her action, Sherry, of Newtown, Celbridge, Co Kildare, claims that an order from the Minister last August to remove the school’s historical records in the computed grades process resulted in an unfair 55 point reduction on her exit certificate .
McDonagh SC, with Micheál P. O’Higgins SC and Brendan Hennessy BL, instructed by Ferrys Solicitors, state that their client was greatly disappointed when the total CAO points estimated by his teachers from 542 for him was reduced to 487 in the process .
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His first course choice was pharmacy at TCD, which he missed. He claims that the Minister’s leadership interfered with the calculated ratings process overseen by an independent steering committee was “illegal”.
The Minister and the State, represented by Eileen Barrington SC and Brian Kennedy SC, deny the claims and maintain that there is no reason to believe that Sherry would be in an improved position if historical data from the school were included.
It is also denied that the Minister has breached commitments regarding the fairness and comparability of the 2020 ratings.
They say that Belvedere College students received, on average, higher scores in 2020 compared to 2017-19 and there is no basis for any claim that Sherry would have been treated more favorably in another school category.
Because the computed grades process was completed and the CAO offers were issued, any attempt to restore the school’s historical data would be inappropriate or disproportionate as it would cast doubt on the results of a significant number of students and their right to university places, they argue.
The hearing before Judge Charles Meenan continues and is expected to last two weeks.
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