The CEO of the new State Examinations Commission, Mr Padraig MacNamara, has pledged that standards will not drop when it takes over the running of the Leaving and Junior Cert exams which start on Wednesday, writes Kathryn Holmquist, Education Correspondent
The establishment of the commission means that the Department of Education will not have operational responsibility for overseeing the exams for the first time in the history of the State.
Mr MacNamara has rejected concerns that the running of the exams may be less rigorous under the new commission, which will oversee the papers for over 100,000 students in what is a radical change in education policy.
The new commission chief, who is ultimately in charge of two million individual exam components printed on 25 million A4 sheets of paper, says he is confident nothing will go wrong.
The commission was established in March by the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, as part of a drive to allow his Department the breathing space it needs to focus on policy.
It followed the internal review of the Department, known as the Cromien Report, which said the Department should divest itself of day-to-day functions such as running exams.
Most of the 150 personnel working for the commission have transferred from the Department of Education Examinations Branch in Athlone.
A computer tracking and tracing system will ensure that every script reaches Athlone safely, where it will be assigned to one of 5,700 examiners.
Examiners have received extensive training to ensure that papers are marked fairly and consistently. Of 960,000 grades issued in 2002, only 11,000 were appealed, which is a good result, Mr MacNamara believes.
The Leaving Cert results will be issued to schools and online on Wednesday, August 13th.