Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Stanton for raising this matter, which I am taking on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn. The State Examinations Commission was established as an independent agency in 2003 and has statutory responsibility for operational matters relating to the certificate examinations. Every possible effort is made by the commission, within the limitations of our examination system, to accommodate candidates who suffer illness, bereavement or other trauma immediately before or during the examinations. Each year, arrangements are made to cater for a wide range of personal emergencies. These include alterations to the standard examination timetable and special sittings in venues such as hospitals. The National Educational Psychological Service also assists schools and examination candidates in crisis during examinations.

The terminal nature of the Irish examinations system, however, imposes some constraints on the degree to which the life experiences of individual candidates can be accommodated. The issue of repeat examinations was considered prior to the State Examinations Commission's establishment by the Department of Education and Skills. It was concluded that the constraints inherent in a terminal and externally examined examination system result in significant difficulties in respect of the provision of repeat examinations. These constraints derive from the length of the school year, the timescale required for holding examinations, providing adequate time for the preparation of marking schemes for repeat examination papers and arranging for the comprehensive briefing and training of examiners, providing ample time for those examiners to conduct the marking to a high standard, the pressing requirement of having results available to feed into the college entry process conducted by the Central Applications Office and college admissions departments in August each year and the need for an appeals system for the review of repeat results.

The State examinations are run against the tightest of timescales and to maximum capacity in delivering a high quality product at both leaving and junior certificate levels. It is not possible to hold repeat examinations and have results available to the deadlines required. Repeat examinations would not accommodate all the life experiences of individual candidates because not all candidates would be able to take the repeat examinations for one reason or another. Over the years the SEC has dealt with a great variety of individual cases. In the final analysis, it is difficult to envisage a fair, proper and impartial system of repeat examinations without allowing all candidates to repeat their tests.

Deputy Stanton may be referring to a specific case. The Deputy should note that the Minister's office tried to make contact with him today to establish if there are any specific matters which need to be addressed or brought to the attention of the SEC. I would be pleased to bring to the SEC's attention any specific case which the Deputy wishes to raise.

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