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State Examinations

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 7 October 2020

Wednesday, 7 October 2020

Questions (127, 128)

Cian O'Callaghan

Question:

127. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan asked the Minister for Education if equal weight was given to Irish, English and maths and the two best subjects of students from the junior certificate; if not, if different weighting per subject was used; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29003/20]

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Cian O'Callaghan

Question:

128. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan asked the Minister for Education if a student’s specific percentage regarding leaving certificate 2020 and the calculated grades process result or overall grade was used from their junior certificate to calculate their leaving certificate 2020 results; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29004/20]

View answer

Written answers

I propose to take Questions Nos. 127 and 128 together.

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.

Schools provided an estimated percentage mark and a rank order for each student’s subjects. 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. 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 in order 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. It was inherent to the system of calculated grades that school estimates would be subject to adjustment through this standardisation process.

These adjustments resulted in the school estimates staying the same or being revised upwards or downwards. The standardisation process operated on the premise that the school estimates should only be adjusted through the standardisation process where there was credible statistical evidence to justify changing them.

A standardising process happens every year and would have happened in 2020 had the Leaving Certificate examinations been run as normal. In the system of calculated grades, the standardisation process applied uniformly across all subject and levels and school types. 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.

Following standardisation, the estimated percentage mark was converted to a calculated mark and subsequently, a calculated grade, which was provided to students on 7 September. It is only at this point that students were awarded a grade.

The use which has been made of Junior Cycle data in the model is set out in detail in the Report of the National Standardisation Group. Individual Junior Cycle results were not used to determine any individual’s Calculated Grades. Rather, the Calculated Grades process took account of the overall Junior Cycle performance of the Leaving Certificate class of 2020 in each school and used this data to help in predicting the likely range of Leaving Certificate performance of that group using related information about the relationship between performance at Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate based on national data over time for that subject at that level.

On 30 September, I announced that two errors had been found in the Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades process. These errors related to the way in which the coding for the process utilised Junior Cycle data.

On 03 October, following a further review of the coding by an independent third party, I announced that a further error had been identified.

These three errors were rectified, and following this, a total of 6,100 students have received higher grades. These students were able to access their improved results 03 October.

Technical details of the Calculated Grades model and standardisation process were published on the date of issue of the results, 7 September, and are available here:

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/2ed9b-leaving-certificate-2020-calculated-grades-technical-reports/ .

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