Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)
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Question 82: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the reason it is not possible to provide a second opportunity within weeks for students to sit exams in view of the fact that each year a number of students due to illness or bereavement are unable to sit State exams. [5385/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The State Examinations Commission has statutory responsibility for operational matters relating to the certificate examinations, including organising the holding of examinations; ensuring the preparation of examination papers and other examination materials; and determining procedures in places where examinations are conducted, including the supervision of examinations.

Notwithstanding this, within the limitations of our examination system every possible effort is made by the commission to accommodate candidates who suffer illness, bereavement or other trauma either immediately before or during the examinations. Each year, arrangements are made to cater for a wide range of emergencies. These include alterations to the standard examination timetable and special sittings in venues such as hospitals. The National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, also assists schools and students in crisis situations during examinations.

Prior to the establishment of the State Examinations Commission, my Department had over the years considered the issue of a repeat leaving certificate because it was raised regularly. My Department concluded that the constraints, inherent in a terminal and externally examined examination system, resulted in significant difficulties in the provision of repeat examinations.

These constraints derive from: the length of the school year; the timescale required for holding examinations — the leaving certificate timetable covers 13 exam days which is almost three weeks; defining eligibility to enter for repeat exams — it is likely that such facility could not be confined to those who missed the original exam because of illness but would also have to be open to other categories of students such as those, for example, who felt they had not performed to their optimum ability in the original examination; obtaining sufficient additional suitably qualified persons to act as examiners; providing adequate time for the preparation of marking schemes for the repeat examination papers and arranging for 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 which is conducted by the CAO and college admissions departments in August of each year; the need for an appeal system for the review of examination results.

When one considers that our State examinations currently operate against the tightest of timescales and to maximum capacity in delivering a high quality product at both leaving and junior certificate levels to strict end-user deadlines, it is considered that it would not be possible to hold repeat examinations and have results available to the deadlines required.