Vol. 546 No. 5
293 Mr. Bradford asked the Minister for Education and Science if provision can be made for the return of a junior certificate metalwork project, which was awarded an ETTA award recently, to a person (details supplied) in County Leitrim. [32340/01]
Every year my Department receives more than 1.5 million scripts, practical pieces and other test products for examination. It is not logistically feasible to facilitate the return of this quantity of examination material to candidates. In the interests of fairness and equity it is not possible to return a metalwork project to a particular candidate while retaining material from other candidates who took part in metalwork, art, engineering and other examinations.
The optimum solution to the issues raised by the Deputy lies in realigning the assessment arrangements in subjects such as metalwork that generate artefacts. At present the practical pieces in a number of subjects are examined in schools and consequently there are no logistical difficulties involved in returning the material. There are short-term storage issues for the schools which makes it difficult to expand the number of subjects where the schools retain the material to include subjects like metalwork.
I have requested my officials to review the arrangements in consultation with the relevant interests, including school management bodies, in order to progress these issues on a consensus basis.
