State exams review to focus on boosting examiner numbers as wait continues for Junior Cert results

A “root and branch” review into the marking of State exams will focus on how to boost examiner numbers and provide greater certainty over the future release of results.

Minister for Education Norma Foley said on Wednesday that she understood the frustration of students who were still waiting for their Junior Cycle results. She said the State Examinations Commission (SEC) would be in a position early next week to confirm a release date for schools.

Ms Foley added that examiner supply challenges have been particularly acute for Junior Cycle exams this year, and that the numbers available were significantly below what was required to mark the papers during the normal summer window. “Once the Junior Cycle results are out there will be a full and comprehensive review seeking ways to ascertain how best we can encourage and support more examiners to come on board to be part of the system,” she said. “Equally so, it will look at the whole question around dates and timing and everything else.”

When asked if higher rates of pay were a way to attract more teachers to marking roles, Ms Foley said there has been an increase in correcting rates. “I absolutely accept that people should be paid appropriately. And for that reason the rates of pay have significantly improved. Notwithstanding that, I think it is greater than that... there is extraordinary benefit from availing of correcting roles.”

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The SEC warned that it was facing a shortfall in applications from teachers seeking to work as examiners across all subjects just weeks before the Junior Cycle and Leaving Cert exams got under way. All qualified teachers are eligible to apply for examiner positions, and successful candidates are selected on the basis of their teaching and assessment experience and qualifications.

The exams body confirmed to The Irish Times during the summer that a “small proportion” of the 4,000-plus examiners this year included unqualified trainee teachers.

Teacher union sources say a combination of an “exhausting” academic year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, taxation rules and limited opportunity for travel expenses may have affected the number of teachers available.

Ms Foley said she wanted to work collaboratively with teachers to explore the opportunities around marking exams. She added that a number of questions would be examined in the review, including whether a second set of Leaving Cert exams would be held in future.

This year, she said, priority was given to marking the Leaving Cert exams and to processing appeals, which issued last Friday. This, she added, was due to their direct impact on accessing further and higher education, as well as a 2019 court judgment which obliges authorities to fast-track appeal results.

The next priority, she said, would be Junior Cycle results and this process was “well advanced but ongoing”.

While she said marking has been completed in almost all Junior Cycle subjects, in a small number of subjects in which examiner supply shortages were most severe during the summer months the marking process was ongoing.