In 1995, 50 students were not credited with marks for craftwork which they had prepared as part of their art exam. At least eight of these students missed college places. A further 359 students were upgraded after being marked too harshly.
A Price Waterhouse report on the "operational failures" of the 1995 Leaving Cert art exam set out a catalogue of repeated errors made in the examining and marking processes. There were multiple examples of deficient arrangements, regulations being ignored, misunderstandings, poor communications within the exams branch, and the failure of the internal investigation. Some 100 recommendations were made.
Last year, a number of new security measures were put in place. The cornerstone of these arrangements was the establishment of a new appeals tier. Independent examination commissioners were appointed as a final court of appeal. Their job was to ensure that due process had taken place, rather than to re-mark the papers. Examination commissioners will be reappointed this year.
Bar coding was introduced to track the movement of some 125,000 packets from schools to the Department via the postal system. This system will now be used to track the return of scripts to schools for viewing by students.
However, problems with the marking of the 1997 English, French, Spanish, Irish and accounting scripts led to the complete re-marking and rechecking of hundreds of scripts and oral exam tapes. This re-marking only took place after a concerted campaign by parents and teachers, spearheaded by Mr Niall Molloy, an English teacher at Marist College in Athlone, Co Westmeath.
The chief examiner subsequently produced a detailed report on the outcome of the appeals process. Examination reports for the six new Leaving Certificate syllabuses examined for the first time in June 1997 have also been published recently.
Yesterday, Mr Martin admitted that the Department had made a mystery of the whole examination process and wrapped it in secrecy. "This has not been helped by the suggestion that mistakes, when they occur, are only reluctantly admitted to," he said.
In December last year Mr Martin set up an expert advisory group to provide him with independent advice and evaluation on the operation of the examinations.
The number of students appealing the results of their papers has been rising steadily over the past few years. In 1994, 6,391 rechecks were sought, resulting in 536 upgrades. Last year, the numbers had almost doubled, with 11,745 rechecks and 1,363 subjects being upgraded. The 11,747 rechecks represent about 3 per cent of the 425,000 subject grades issued last year. Almost 600 of these students further appealed to the examinations commissioners, resulting in two grade changes.
In a system which handles about 800,000 individual components, including orals, aurals, practicals, projects, and written papers, a certain level of error is inevitable. However, it was the perceived reluctance to own up to and redress these errors which caused most problems. The new measures should significantly increase confidence in the system.