Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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127. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if equal weight was given to Irish, English and maths and the two best subjects of students from the junior certificate; if not, if different weighting per subject was used; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29003/20]

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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128. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if a student’s specific percentage regarding leaving certificate 2020 and the calculated grades process result or overall grade was used from their junior certificate to calculate their leaving certificate 2020 results; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29004/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 127 and 128 together.

The decision to adopt a model of Calculated Grades by my Department was a direct result of COVID-19, which prevented the state from running the conventional Leaving Certificate Examinations.

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 the Department of Education and Skills, the Educational Research Centre and international external expertise.

Schools provided an estimated percentage mark and a rank order for each student’s subjects. The process of national standardisation was applied to the school information in order to ensure comparability between the standards applied by individual schools and the national standard. We know from research that teachers are very good at making judgements about their students in the local context of the school. Schools approached this task in a very professional manner, in line with detailed guidelines about the process, but inevitably some schools were overly harsh in their estimations while others were overly generous. This is to be expected given that there is no national standard on which to base an estimated mark. But in order to be fair to the class of 2020, the teacher judgements made at the level of the school had to be adjusted so that a common national standard was applied.It was inherent to the system of calculated grades that school estimates would be subject to adjustment through this standardisation process.

These adjustments resulted in the school estimates staying the same or being revised upwards or downwards. The standardisation process operated on the premise that the school estimates should only be adjusted through the standardisation process where there was credible statistical evidence to justify changing them.

A standardising process happens every year and would have happened in 2020 had the Leaving Certificate examinations been run as normal.In the system of calculated grades, the standardisation process applied uniformly across all subject and levels and school types. The degree to which mark changes occurred related to the degree of over or underestimation in the school estimates for each subject and each level. This means that some students experienced mark changes from the school estimates but no changes to the grades based on the school estimates; while others will have experienced marks changes from the teacher estimates leading to grade changes in one or more of their subjects.

Following standardisation, the estimated percentage mark was converted to a calculated mark and subsequently, a calculated grade, which was provided to students on 7 September. It is only at this point that students were awarded a grade.

The use which has been made of Junior Cycle data in the model is set out in detail in the Report of the National Standardisation Group. Individual Junior Cycle results were not used to determine any individual’s Calculated Grades. Rather, the Calculated Grades process took account of the overall Junior Cycle performance of the Leaving Certificate class of 2020 in each school and used this data to help in predicting the likely range of Leaving Certificate performance of that group using related information about the relationship between performance at Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate based on national data over time for that subject at that level.

On 30 September, I announced that two errors had been found in the Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades process. These errors related to the way in which the coding for the process utilised Junior Cycle data.

On 03 October, following a further review of the coding by an independent third party, I announced that a further error had been identified.

These three errors were rectified, and following this, a total of 6,100 students have received higher grades. These students were able to access their improved results 03 October.

Technical details of the Calculated Grades model and standardisation process were published on the date of issue of the results, 7 September, and are available here:

.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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129. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the steps she will take to address the issue of students who have been doubly impacted by the fact that those who received an inflated grade will retain the grades and the places in college ahead of those that through no fault of their own were incorrectly downgraded and will not receive the opportunity to have an inflated grade; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29005/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The decision to adopt a model of Calculated Grades by my Department was a direct result of COVID-19, which prevented the state from running the conventional Leaving Certificate Examinations.

On 30 September, I announced that two errors had been found in the Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades process. These errors related to the way in which the coding for the process utilised Junior Cycle data.

On 03 October, following a further review of the coding by an independent third party, I announced that a further error had been identified.

These three errors were rectified, and following this, a total of 6,100 students received higher grades. These students were able to access their improved results on 03 October.

Technical details of the Calculated Grades model and standardisation process were published on the date of issue of the results and are available here:

.

Only the marks and grades that increased have been applied to the students’ results.

The Leaving Certificate system has a well-established practice of not reducing the marks or grades of students who have not appealed their results, but who through an appeal by another student or other systemic check are identified as somebody who received higher marks or grades than were merited.

In keeping with that principle, and mindful of the fact that the mistake was not the students’ mistake, students who received higher grades as a result of the errors in the Calculated Grades system will not be downgraded. The Leaving Certificate results of these students will remain unchanged as they do every year in these circumstances.

The CAO system operates on behalf of the higher education institutions solely on the basis of the Leaving Certificate results that candidates have been awarded.

Therefore, it is not appropriate for the CAO to make any differentiation within the group of candidates with the 2020 Leaving Certificate, just as the CAO cannot treat a 2019 Leaving Certificate candidate differently from a 2020 one. The CAO process for 2020 has been undertaken on that basis.

Furthermore, there has been an increase in the numbers of available places in colleges so that improved CAO offers can be made all candidates who would have been entitled to them. There were also extensive additional higher education places in 2020 – the most places ever offered – and the Department of Further and Higher Education and the higher education institutions are fully committed to providing further places to accommodate all students who are entitled to improved CAO offers.

As candidates receive and accept improved CAO offers arising this week, they will move from one course to another and this will create the potential for further offers to other candidates in succeeding rounds of the CAO. This will mean an overall increase in the numbers of students in third-level education and will lessen any risk of candidates not being able to participate in third-level education.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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130. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if a full review of the entire calculated grades process will be undertaken in view of the errors that have been discovered. [29006/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The decision to adopt a model of Calculated Grades by my Department was a result of COVID-19, which prevented the State from running the conventional Leaving Certificate Examinations. The purpose of this process was to allow as many students as possible to progress to employment, further education and training, or higher education.

On 30 September, I made a statement advising that two errors had been identified in the Calculated Grades process. These meant that incorrect grades were issued to some students when they received their results on 7 September.

The first error, in one out of 50,000 lines of code, was in relation to the processing of Junior Cycle data. The system was meant to draw on the core Junior Cycle subjects of English, Irish and Maths, and combine them with the students’ 2 best non-core subjects for all of the students in each class in each school. The coding error instead combined the core subjects with the students’ 2 weakest non-core subjects.

The error meant that, in some subjects, some students received Calculated Grades that were lower than they should have been, while some students received grades that were higher than they should have been.

In the course of a review which the Department then undertook, Departmental staff found a further error in the section of the code dealing with Junior Cycle results. The Junior Cycle subject Civil, Social and Political Education (CPSE) was meant to be disregarded as part of the model but was not. This second error, however, had a negligible impact on results.

I provided a further update on 03 October, announcing that improved Calculated Grades would issue to impacted students that day. This announcement was made following a review of essential aspects of the coding by Educational Testing Services, ETS, a non-profit organisation based in the United States.

ETS completed their review and provided it to my Department on 3 October. The review identified one further error, relating to how the code handled cases where students did not sit all three core subjects (Irish, English and Maths) at Junior Cycle level.

As a result of rectification of the three errors, a total of 6,100 students have received higher grades. This breaks down as follows:

5,408 students have received a higher grade, by one grade band, in one subject,

621 students have received a higher grade, by one grade band, in two subjects,

71 students have received a higher grade, by one grade band, in three or more subjects.

In addition to the students who received a lower grade than they should have in this year’s Leaving Certificate, some students received a higher grade than they should have. However, these students grades are not being amended and the students will not be affected.

ETS also identified an issue concerning how the algorithm used in the standardisation process treated students’ marks at the extreme ends of the marks scale (99% and over, 1% and below). However, ETS also stated that this had no material impact on the results and no student could receive a lower grade as a result of it.

Following correction of the errors the Department sent a corrected file of student results to the CAO. The CAO have identified that a little under 450 of the 6,100 students will be eligible to receive a new CAO offer. The Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science will work with the CAO and the higher education institutions to see how these students can be facilitated to commence the course that they would, in other circumstances, have been offered in an earlier round. Any student who would have been entitled to a different offer in previous CAO rounds if they received the correct grade on 7 September will receive this offer or a deferred offer as part of the CAO Round 4 offers which are being released on 8 October 2020.

A copy of the report submitted by ETS is available on .

On 03 October I also stated that I have asked that an independent comprehensive review of the operation of the Calculated Grades process take place when the process is complete. This review will include independent international expertise.