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State Examinations

Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 September 2020

Thursday, 17 September 2020

Questions (116)

Catherine Connolly

Question:

116. Deputy Catherine Connolly asked the Minister for Education if her attention has been drawn to the case of a student (details supplied) whose leaving certificate calculated grades were downgraded by one grade in six of their seven higher level subjects; if she is satisfied that this student has not been unfairly disadvantaged by the calculated grades system, particularly in view of the fact that 85% of their grades were downgraded compared to a national average of 17%; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24494/20]

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Written answers

The decision to adopt a model of Calculated Grades by my Department was a direct result of COVID-19, which prevented the state from running the conventional Leaving Certificate Examinations.

The design of the Calculated Grades model was informed by advice from a Technical Working Group comprising experts drawn from the State Examinations Commission, the Inspectorate of the Department of Education and Skills, the Educational Research Centre and international external expertise.

The focus of the Calculated Grades process has at all times been on the student and not on the system and my recent decision, announced on 1 September, to remove the school-by-school historical data from the national standardisation process underpins this commitment, ensuring that the performance of this cohort of students is not constrained by how their school has historically performed at Leaving Certificate.

Schools provided an estimated percentage mark and a rank order (the student's place in the class group) for each student’s subjects.  We know from research that teachers are very good at making judgements about their students in the local context of the school.  Schools approached this task in a very professional manner, in line with detailed guidelines about the process, but inevitably some schools were overly harsh in their estimations while others were overly generous. This is to be expected given that there is no national standard on which to base an estimated mark.  But to be fair to the class of 2020, the teacher judgements made at the level of the school had to be adjusted so that a common national standard was applied.  

The process of national standardisation was applied to the school information in order to ensure comparability between the standards applied by individual schools and the national standard.  This standardising process happens every year and would have happened in 2020 had the Leaving Certificate examinations been run as normal.   The standardisation process applied across all subject and levels.  The adjustments that occurred through standardisation resulted in the school estimates staying the same or being revised upwards or downwards. The degree to which mark changes occurred related to the degree of over or underestimation in the school estimates for each subject and each level.  This means that some students experienced mark changes from the school estimates but no changes to the grades based on the school estimates; while others will have experienced marks changes from the teacher estimates leading to grade changes in one or more of their subjects. 

The overall data on school estimated marks showed that there was a very significant rise in estimated grades against what would normally be achieved nationally. This level of grade increase based on the school estimates would have been unrealistic. For example, based on the school data there would have been 13.8% H1 grades this year when in a normal year there is 5.8%. Even with the standardisation process the rate of H1s this year is over 9%.   

In the absence of the Leaving Certificate examinations in 2020 every effort has been made to make the system as fair as possible for as many students a possible. The statistical model used was blind to demographic characteristics (e.g. school type, student gender, etc.) either at the level of the student or the school.   The standardisation process means that the same standard has been applied uniformly across all schools  his means anyone using the certificate to make a judgement between two people who hold this certificate, either now or in the future, can place equal value on the same grade in the same subject, without regard to where they went to school, as they would in a normal year.

While some students will be disappointed at the results they have achieved, this is the case every year when the Leaving Certificate results are published. It may be more difficult for students to understand when they see the estimated mark from the school has been adjusted downwards.

The standardisation model has been subject to a high degree of human oversight by the National Standardisation Group with a number of safeguards built in to ensure fair results for students.

Technical details of the Calculated Grades model and standardisation process were published on the date of issue of the results and are available here: https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/2ed9b-leaving-certificate-2020-calculated-grades-technical-reports/.

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