OPINION: The decision to reschedule the exam for tomorrow has unsettled students and added to their stress

THE STATE exam body cannot be blamed for the human errors that forced the rescheduling of the English paper, but it should have been possible to roll out the back-up paper yesterday.

The chief executive of the State Examinations Commission ( SEC) Pádraic McNamara has already begun work on the investigation ordered by Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe into the exam fiasco in Co Louth.

McNamara is a veteran with some 30 years’ service in the examinations branch of the Department of Education and at the SEC since it was established in 2003. In an Irish Times interview last month, he spoke about the huge logistical task involved in running the exams, and the potential for error.

But the scale of the human error in the Drogheda case represents the worst possible scenario for the SEC.

The errors almost defy belief. The superintendent, generally a well-established teacher, distributed Paper 2 rather than Paper 1 to students at St Oliver’s Community School. The error was compounded by the apparent failure of the superintendent to inform either the school principal or the SEC.

There was a gap of nearly 6½ hours between the mistake in the exam hall at 9.30am on Wednesday and the move to alert the SEC at 3.55pm.

So should the SEC be in the dock over the fiasco? The commission cannot be blamed for the human error. Critically, there was no failure of the exam system of the type which has become commonplace in Britain. This was human error; nothing more and nothing else. Once the leak was confirmed, the SEC had no alternative but to cancel the exam. Otherwise, the integrity of the exam process would have been hopelessly compromised.

But the SEC’s decision to reschedule the exam for tomorrow morning merits criticism. It has unsettled students and greatly added to their stress. The SEC may have protected the integrity of the actual exam. It should also have protected the integrity of the exam timetable.

The timetable was published by the SEC six months ago. It is the essential roadmap used by students as they make their way through the exam marathon.

The best way to protect the timetable was to ensure the back-up or contingency paper was in place and ready to be rolled out. The SEC prepares these back-up papers in all Leaving Cert subjects in case of leaks or other problems. In this case, the back-up paper has been ready since before Christmas. So why was it not stored safely in schools or Garda stations, along with the actual papers?

The SEC says it retains the back-up papers in Athlone because of the potential for error. This, it said, made it logistically impossible to distribute the contingency paper to all exam centres by 9am yesterday.

But surely the back-up papers could and should have been stored in half a dozen regional centres and distributed to schools speedily? Surely the SEC could come up with some system to ensure the back-up paper was only distributed after an elaborate security procedure was followed? The SEC says it was not possible to get the paper out to 4,000 exam centres, but this figure inflates the logistical task involved.

In fact, there are exams taking place in about 800 schools. Other exam centres are available for students with special needs and various accommodations, but these are generally set up within the school premises.

On RTÉ’s News at One yesterday, one exam superintendent said the SEC should have, if necessary, stayed up all night to ensure the exam took place as timetabled yesterday. He is right. In these days of express courier services, the SEC should have been able to get the exam paper to every exam centre overnight.

For the students, the rescheduling of the exam was also a worst-case scenario. English Paper 2 has been described by one English teacher as a kind of Russian roulette where students have to guess which four of the eight prescribed poets will feature in the exam. The leaked paper features the four poets which most students and teachers had actually tipped to come up.

Yesterday, students facing Saturday’s exam had an unscheduled additional day to dwell on the possibility that four completely different poets might emerge in the contingency paper. It is to be hoped that their worst fears will not be realised.

But these students had a right to expect that the timetable would have been rolled out, as published. They had a right to expect they should not be made suffer for someone else’s mistake.