merrion street

The SEC report has found that mistakes that caused stress for students sitting State Examinations were due to human error. Issues such as staff changes in the last 12 months combined with the operational demands associated with preparing large quantities of papers for Leaving Certificate, Leaving Certificate Applied and Junior Certificate contributed to the errors.

The Minister is concerned that errors can and do occur. But he is confident that the SEC has a robust system in place to respond to mistakes and in addition, through its annual reviews of the system, is constantly striving to minimise their occurrence. He has acknowledged the measures put in place by the SEC to ensure candidates affected by the mistakes were not disadvantaged in terms of the marks they achieved and is satisfied these have been effective (See Appendix 1). The key concern at all stages of the marking process was to ensure that candidates were not disadvantaged.

The Minister also acknowledges the comprehensive nature of the report and the complexity of the examination process from the preparation of papers to the delivery, last week, of the results to 55,572 Leaving Certificate candidates.

Having considered the SEC Report’s findings the Minister notes the recommendations made to reduce the risk of errors occurring in future State examinations. For example, the SEC will include an assessment of the risks associated with the loss of subject specific examinations’ expertise. In addition, the SEC will carry out a further review of “post-print” errors and of ways to strengthen its procedures and protocols. The SEC will complete this review by October.

The Minister has asked the SEC to brief him on the October review. In the meantime the Department will engage with the SEC in relation to the recommendations of this current report.

ENDS

Note to Editors:

The Report on the Errors in the 2013 State Certificate Examination Papers is available at the following link: http://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Education-Reports/Report-on-Errors-in-the-2013-State-Certificate-Examination-Papers.pdf

In 2013 the SEC produced 92 Mathematics papers. They included:

At Leaving Certificate:

24 live papers - comprising 12 English versions and 12 Irish versions across the three levels for both phase two and phase three Project Maths candidates.

24 Contingency papers

At Junior Certificate:

20 live papers - comprising 10 English versions and 10 Irish versions across the three levels for both phase one and phase two Project Maths candidates

20 contingency papers

At Leaving Certificate Applied:

2 live papers – comprising an English and an Irish Version of Mathematical Applications paper

2 Contingency papers comprising of same