Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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467. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the way in which predicted grades were accepted by her Department for the leaving certificate applied from persons who are not accepted as teachers. [24176/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The system of Calculated Grades was created to allow as many as possible of the 60,000 students in the Leaving Certificate class of 2020 to progress to employment, further education and training, or higher education in a way that is fair and equitable to all students.

The system is underpinned by key principles of objectivity, equity and fairness. For the Calculated Grades system to be operated with integrity, and to ensure fairness to all students, an estimated percentage mark, based on credible, satisfactory evidence, could only be accepted from an appropriate source.

For students attending school, estimated marks were provided to the Department following an in-school alignment process which was overseen by a school’s principal and/or deputy principals. All estimated marks were returned to the Department were provided on forms which were co-signed by a school’s principal or deputy principal(s).

Circular 0037/2020 provided guidance to schools on providing estimated percentage marks and included specific advice regarding the Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA).

The process applied for Leaving Certificate Applied was broadly similar to that of the Leaving Certificate Established and Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme.  Specific approaches were suggested in light of the particular nature of the LCA programme. 

Schools were advised that where there was a single teacher of a subject for LCA, the LCA Coordinator in that school should undertake the alignment process along with each subject teacher. An alternative approach to the process, given the cross-curricular nature of the programme, was to involve a number of (or all of) the teachers in a single collective process of estimating marks, rank ordering and alignment, assisted by the LCA Co-ordinator.