The State Examinations Commission (SEC) have sacked thirty Junior and Leaving Certificate examiners this year for breaching strict protocol. A further six have been demoted and seventeen have received an official warning.
According to The Irish Times a total of fifty-three examiners were found to have breached strict marking rules for the secondary school exams. A spokesman for the SEC told the newspaper:
“Of these 30 will not be reappointed as an examiner, six will only be re-appointed at a lower level in the respective subjects while 17 received an official warning.”
The Commission have stated that they do not provide information about examiners who break the strict rules:
“Examiners who are reappointed at a lower level in the respective subjects typically mark less demanding material such as Junior as opposed to Leaving Certificate, and Foundation or Ordinary, as opposed to Higher level scripts and would also have their new work subject to closer oversight.”
This year, the Leaving Certificate examinations culminated in the issue of some 390,000 grades to 58,466 candidates. These students were afforded an opportunity to view their scripts in their schools at the beginning of September before making a decision as to whether or not they wished to appeal the results of one or more subjects. In making the decision, candidates had access to copies of the marking schemes for those subjects and could be accompanied to the viewing of their scripts by a parent or teacher.
The SEC released figures stating that a total of 5,465 candidates made applications for appeals against 9,500 grades leading to 1,698 upgrades, which is 0.43% of all grades awarded in the 2016 Leaving Certificate examination. One result was downgraded in the appeal process this year.
In the processing of appeals, the work of each student is fully re-marked question by question using the original marking scheme. The re-marking is performed by a different examiner to the one who originally marked the work.
Quality assurance checks carried out by the SEC after the provisional results in August also resulted in 94 candidates, who had not appealed their result, receiving upgrades.
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