Theresa Ahearn
Ceist:35 Mrs. T. Ahern asked the Minister for Education if she will have arrangements made for Leaving Certificate results to be posted to students' homes in the future; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [454/94]
Written Answers. - Mailing of Leaving Certificate Results.
My Department issues leaving certificate results direct to students' homes each year in the case of the 5,000 or so students who are admitted to the examination as non-school candidates. The results of the remaining 60,000 or so students are issued to the schools which entered them for the examination. My Department has no plans to issue leaving certificate results direct to student's homes in the case of the 60,000 school candidates.
There are a number of reasons for this. In the first place, it would be a huge task to record the 60,000 addresses and the inevitable changes of address. There would also be great room for error in notifying my Department of the correct address, in notifying changes of address or in recording the address.
Secondly, An Post is in a position to guarantee next-day delivery of the results to the 800 post-primary schools. This could not be guaranteed in the case of 65,000 individual addresses in view of the sheer size of the task and the possibility of wrong addresses, out-dated addresses and imprecise addresses. My Department's experience of issuing results direct to the 5,000 non-school candidates is that each year many claim that they have not received the results on the due day.
Finally, I would not like to underestimate the role played by school principals in conveying the results directly to their students. In particular, candidates who are disappointed will often be reassured by the school principal, at the time that they receive their results, that there are options open to them either for future study or for applying for a recheck.