Madam, – The catalogue of errors in the recent exams papers is entirely unacceptable. Heads must roll.
The omission of questions in certain copies of the Leaving Cert accounting paper shows staggering incompetence. The different amount of time given to the affected students at different schools illustrates a disjointed approach even to minimising the effect of the error. It suggests that the State Exams Commission (SEC) has not even attempted to foresee such an error. The communication to exam supervisors was not clear enough and/or certain supervisors appear incapable of granting appropriate compensatory time as instructed.
The fact that students were required to start the accounting paper, and thereby make choices of questions to be attempted without sight of the full paper, severely disadvantaged them. The granting of additional time would not have compensated for this calamity.
The Junior Cert business paper included incorrect figures, businesses with the same address, and dates that did not tally. The admission by the SEC that no examiner attempted the question with the incorrect figures before the paper was printed can only be described as gross incompetence.
The SEC states, “It is the aspiration of any examining body, including the SEC, to preside over a system that is completely error free. However, it is recognised, in examining circles, that this will always be an aspiration rather than a completely achievable goal.”
That is a fair comment in relation to minor typographical errors. It does not, however, forgive the obvious lack of quality control illustrated by the SEC.
The SEC’s stock statements that no student would be disadvantaged are, like the related exam papers, not quite correct. The SEC may attempt to take steps to ensure that no student will be disadvantaged, but it cannot be certain how errors will affect students. The errors in the papers will increase the stress that students are under and as some students will be affected by stress more than others they will clearly be disadvantaged. Similarly, where some students may puzzle for five minutes in trying to understand an exam paper error, others may spend 10 or more minutes. Again, such students would be disadvantaged.
I work in an accountancy practice where despite our best efforts, errors do occur. If any of our staff were to refuse to apologise for errors and accept the effect of same, or to not attempt to improve systems to ensure that similar errors would not reoccur, then they would be shown the door within a week. As I said, heads must roll. – Yours, etc,