Vol. 301 No. 8
asked the Minister for Education the procedure that must be adopted by a leaving certificate candidate who wants to have any of his papers rechecked with a view to increasing the grade awarded; and the procedure adopted within the Department in the carrying out of any such recheck.
28.
asked the Minister for Education the number of candidates at the last leaving certificate examination who did papers whose marks were subject to rechecking at their request on the payment of a fee in accordance with established procedures.
29.
asked the Minister for Education the number of papers in this year's leaving certificate subject to rechecking at the candidate's request in which the grades previously awarded were altered.
With the permission of the Ceann Comhairle, I will take Questions Nos. 27, 28 and 29 together.
In accordance with an agreement between school associations and my Department an application for the re-assessment of an examination result of a school candidate is accepted where the school authority certifies that the result is substantially at variance with what the school expected from the candidate.
A fee of £5 per candidate per subject is charged in all cases. This is returned, if, on re-assessment, the candidate's work is deemed to merit the award of a higher grade.
The marking of the candidate's work is re-assessed by an examiner designated for the purpose.
A total of 4,354 examination papers in single subjects were re-assessed in 1977. The number of cases in which a higher grade was awarded as a result of re-assessment was about 4 per cent.
I should like to thank the Deputy for putting down that question and I hope my reply gets publicity so that people will know what the procedure is.
Would the Minister not accept that it can be a possible source of injustice to require certification by the school to a request by a parent for rechecking and, secondly, could the Minister give the House an assurance that the rechecking is not done by the person who originally marked the paper?
I reject in toto the suggestion in the first part of the supplementary. We have been hearing for years now how important it was to take into account the assessment of the teacher, the person on the floor, so to speak, the person who has had close contact with the individual pupil. It is when he considers the verdict of the public examination and is of the considered opinion, as a professional, that it is not what the pupil was known to him to be worth that the application goes to the Department for re-assessment.
The second point the Deputy made is a good one. As of now I am of the opinion that the person who assessed and marked in the first instance is not involved in the second marking. But I will check that for the Deputy and let him know.
Is it in the brief?
Given that there are approximately 3,000 requests of which only 4 per cent are changed, would the Minister not accept that he is probably making a substantial profit on the scheme? Would he not consider reducing the £5 fee accordingly?
Is the fee refunded if the mark is changed?
Yes, so that the teacher, in a sense, and the school and the pupil are backing a horse.
