Over 6,000 students may have received incorrect grades in this year’s leaving certificate due to two coding error in the calculated grades system, a source told the Irish Independent today.
The newspaper reported that some 6,000 students will “benefit from upgrades” as a result of the error, with the points they are being owed being added on to their current points. The mistake will not affect students who got a higher grade than warranted.
The mistake could lead to colleges having to increase the number of places in courses that affected students are now eligible for.
Minister for Education Norma Foley is expected to make an announcement about the mistake at 4pm today, and an emergency helpline is expected to be set up.
A senior Government source told the Irish Independent: “This could be a very big problem or a minor headache that turns out to be several hundred or 1,000 students. Last year 3,000 students had a successful appeal and of them 600 needed a college place.”
The controversial calculated grades system has already led to 12,000 appeals from students about their grades. The sources said that there may be overlap between these students and the students affected by the calculated grades error.
According to the Irish Independent, Taoiseach Michéal Martin told the Dáil today that the government was bringing in an “independent external evaluation” to look at the system, and that students “have to be communicated with first”.
The Government is bringing in an “independent external evaluation” of the whole process, the Taoiseach told the Dáil, adding that students “may receive upgrades in some of their grades as a result of these errors. They have to be communicated with first”.
In May, the government announced that this year’s leaving certificate exams would not take place and that students would be given the option to receive calculated grades or sit their exams at a later date. The calculated grades were awarded to students on the basis of a number of factors – such as class rankings, students’ performance in previous assessments and other indicators.
A National Standardisation Group combined the information provided by schools with other information in a process of national standardisation. According to the department, high value was placed on the estimates of performance coming from schools in this process, with adjustments made only where teachers and schools were believed to have over or under-estimated.
The vast majority of students achieved the grades assigned to them by their schools, with no change of grade in 79.2 per cent of cases, and 83.1 per cent of all grades either the same or higher than school estimates.
As predicted, leaving certificate results shot up this year under the new calculated grades system compared to last year.
Compulsory subjects all saw bumps in the number of highest grades awarded. In Irish, the the number of H1s this year went up from 6.1 per cent last year to 9.1 per cent. H1s in English increased from 3 per cent to 4.3 per cent, and H1s awarded in mathematics increased 2 per cent from 6.4 per cent to 8.4 per cent.
