Dáil debates

Thursday, 30 July 2020

Ceisteanna - Questions - Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions

State Examinations

10:25 am

Photo of Norma FoleyNorma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The purpose of the calculated grades system is to arrive at the grade each student would have achieved if the leaving certificate examinations had taken place as normal. Students' expected performance in a subject and level is combined with information about how students in a school have fared in the subject in recent years in line with national performance standards over time and with their performance in the junior certificate.

Using a range of different but complementary sources of data will provide the most accurate and fair set of results possible. No single pattern of expected results will determine the calculated grades on its own. The model will combine the range of patterns to generate the grades in a way which is as reasonable, fair and accurate to students as possible. The design of the calculated grades model was informed by advice from a technical working group comprising experts drawn from the State Examinations Commission, the inspectorate of my Department, the Educational Research Centre and international external experts.

While these data sets do include certain demographic information, this demographic information is not being used as part of the process of generating the calculated grades through the standardisation process. However, to make sure that the standardisation process is doing what it is supposed to do, a separate and additional process of validation is being carried out. Validation serves to ensure that the statistical standardisation process presents results that are fair, equitable and in line with previous outcomes to the greatest extent possible. It also serves to check whether the model is resulting in any particular group being advantaged or disadvantaged relative to previous years.

The use of demographic characteristics, including gender and the socioeconomic status of the school, was inherent in the technical working group's design of the calculated grades model. Not to run these checks would run the risk of not being able to tell whether the standardisation process is working to ensure that the leaving certificate results of 2020 are properly comparable with leaving certificate results in any other year.

My Department has published a short guide to data collection, national standardisation and quality assurance which provides further details about the workings of the calculated grades model. This is available online.

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