The idea of setting up a separate agency to handle exams has not always worked well abroad, writes Education Correspondent, Emmet Oliver
After 80 years of relatively blunder-free administration, the Department of Education is handing the management of the exam system over to an independent body.
During this 80-year period, there have been occasional slip-ups - exam papers were once found rolling around a train station - but overall the management of the exam system has been a model of quiet efficiency.
This year up to 130,000 Junior and Leaving Cert students will be hoping this pattern is maintained. The Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, who knows a thing or two about introducing change, has decided to set up an exams commission to run this most sensitive of operations.
He is taking this step to relieve some of the administrative pressure on his Department. The Department of Education is arguably the State's most centralised department, with virtually all the major educational functions run out of its Marlborough Street offices or satellite offices in Tullamore and Athlone.
Officials, who are supposed to be dealing with major issues of policy, often spend hours trying to resolve problems affecting local schools. This reached farcical proportions recently when officials had to spend considerable time trying to investigate a TD's complaint that hand dryers in the toilet of one particular primary school were not working.
This obsession with local issues places a serious burden on staff, but the exam system is not far behind. Each year more than 300 different tests have to be administered and the Department produces about 22 million pages of exam-related paperwork.
Some 130,000 candidates sat exams in over 4,500 examination centres this year. Over two million examination components (written, aural/oral, practicals and projects) were marked.
Mr Dempsey will bring a statutory order setting up the exams body before the Oireachtas in the new year. The five-person board of the new commission was named yesterday and all five are experienced education figures, most of them used to running large educational projects. One of them is Mr Martin Newell, secretary of the Central Applications Office.
While the idea of the Department lightening its administrative load will be welcomed, the experience in Britain of outside agencies running exams may not bode well for Irish exam students.
In Britain, the use of outside agencies and private organisations has been nothing short of disastrous. During the summer, the British education secretary, Ms Estelle Morris, had to step down after allegations that some British exam bodies lowered grades to avoid a row about grade inflation. Thousands of students had to have their papers re-marked.
Before that high-profile political resignation, there were other problems. The exams agency Edexcel set a maths question that could not be answered. It also provided the wrong marks to 10,000 students and failed to deliver exam marks to thousands on time.
In August 2000, the Scottish exam system was in turmoil after 17,000 students received incorrect or incomplete exam marks from the independent agency, the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Mr Dempsey will hope there is no repeat of these blunders here and his decision to appoint such experienced educationalists suggests the chances of serious problems are remote. But in such a sensitive area as exams, where the hopes of thousands are involved, there is no margin for error.