Vol. 498 No. 4
457 Ms Shortall asked the Minister for Education and Science his Department's policy in the correcting of examination papers of diagnosed dyslexic children; the recent changes, if any, to the procedures; if so, the reasons these were made; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27908/98]
Traditionally where a concern has been expressed regarding the readability of material, this has been brought to the attention of the individual examiner. However, in the event of an examiner encountering difficulty in reading the script, the examiner is instructed to send the answerbook to his or her supervising examiner. This is to ensure that notwithstanding any presentational or readability difficulties every effort is made by the examiner or supervising examiner to ensure that the candidate is given full credit for all work done.
For any one subject a common marking scheme is applied to the work of all candidates taking the subject regardless of whether the candidate has a specific learning difficulty which might cause difficulties with the presentation and ultimate readability of material presented for examination.
This year my Department has moved to strengthen this arrangement by instructing all examiners who have a difficulty in accessing the information given by a candidate to refer the script to the supervising examiner. The intention is to ensure that problems with readability whether or not brought to the attention of the Department are dealt with by the examiner and that no candidate is disadvantaged.
