The Civil Service Commissioners conduct open examinations, and in due course it is possible to purchase, through the Government Publications Office, a copy of the papers set and a copy of the results. These papers and results are purchased, not only by candidates who have competed in the examinations, but often by potential candidates as well, so that they may look at the syllabus and papers set, and generally study the marking for the examinations. A number of limited examinations is held by the Civil Service Commissioners. These examinations being limited, the papers and results are not published. The reason may be that there is not sufficient public interest to justify publication, and one can readily understand that point of view, but there is one aspect of the holding of these examinations to which I should like to draw the Minister's attention.
Every candidate who competes in an examination not only likes to get his own marks in the different subjects, so that he can attend to those subjects which are a source of weakness, but to know how he stands in relation to the rest of the competitors, and to see what the standard of marking in a particular subject is. Let us assume that in a particular examination there is a maximum mark of 300 for Irish, and a candidate in the examination who gets his marks discovers that he has got 150 marks in Irish. That gives him the information that he has got half marks in Irish. A 50 per cent. mark may be good if the highest mark in Irish is 60 per cent., but he does not know whether the highest mark is 51 per cent. or 99 per cent., because he does not know the results of the examination generally.
Is there any real difficulty in giving a candidate who sits for a limited examination a copy of the results, so as to enable him not merely to know his own marks, but to ascertain the general standard of marking? Merely to give a candidate his own results gives him no indication at all as to how he did in the examination in relation to other candidates. He knows his own marks, but he does not know the highest mark in a particular subject, and does not know what standard he has reached. Unless he can get the marks of the highest candidate and the other competitors, he cannot know generally how he has done. It cannot be a very difficult job to produce the marks of 100 competitors in an examination.
