Victory for Rebecca as Leaving appeal process fast-tracked

LEAVING Cert students will now be able to get the results of appeals to their results three weeks earlier than in previous years – thanks to a legal challenge taken by a Co. Wexford teenager.

The shake-up in the process follows a High Court case taken by Rebecca Carter earlier this year.

Ms Carter was a single point away from gaining a place at UCD’s veterinary school due to an error in adding up her marks. She said she was told by UCD that if her marks were corrected before September 30, she could begin her course this year, but if this could not be done, she would have to wait until 2019.

The 18-year-old was successful in her appeal and has taken up her place on the course. Last night she told the Mail she was ‘delighted’ with the change to the process.

‘I’m delighted to hear that students won’t have to wait until the middle of October any more.

‘This will have a positive effect and students won’t be High Court: Rebecca Carter left without a college place when they deserved one.

‘Now, when students appeal their results they won’t be left in limbo regarding the amount of points they scored in the leaving cert and, therefore, students won’t go through what I’ve gone through, and other students have gone through, in the past.

‘It’s nice to know the system has changed for the better and students will be under less pressure with regards to the appeals process which can only be seen as an amazing result of the judge’s ruling,’ she said.

Currently, students who appeal and then receive results high enough to allow them to gain entry to their preferred course often have to defer their course offer for another year, as classes would already have begun weeks in advance. However, as these new changes will see students receive their appeal results earlier, in most cases, they will be allowed to take up their course place in the current academic year.

In 2019, Leaving Cert result appeals will be released in the week beginning on September 16 – three weeks earlier than previous years.

In order to allow appeal results to be issued earlier, changes will be made to the Leaving Cert result process, with provisional results and round-one CAO offers set to be released some three weeks earlier than usual.

Under the current process, appeal results are not issued until eight weeks after Leav- ing Cert results day.

The measures announced yesterday will see this timeframe reduced to five weeks.

Students sitting their Leaving Cert in 2019 will receive their provisional results on Thursday August 13, with round one of the CAO offers issued the following Friday.

Appeal examiners will also mark scripts on a full-time basis, rather than only at evenings and weekends.

Colleges and universities will be making changes to support appeal students, with higher education institutes advising no first-year undergraduate classes start earlier than the second week of September.

In a statement, the Department of Education said that it will, along with the State Examinations Commission (SEC), appeal certain ‘broad constitutional and legal issues’ raised by the judgment of the case, but that this will in no way affect Ms Carter.

Minister for Education Joe McHugh said the decision was made following discussions with the SEC, the Irish Universities Association and the Technological Higher Education Association.

Aspects of ruling will be appealed

ONLY through her own determination, and with the backing of her parents, is Wexford student Rebecca Carter currently studying veterinary medicine in this year’s academic intake in UCD.

Now, her action looks set to pay dividends for other students in the future. Having successfully gone to the High Court in September in order to force the issue in the wake of her own mismarked Leaving Certificate examination, Rebecca Carter highlighted the fact that the appeals procedure for Leaving Cert students was taking far too long.

In fact, those who managed to successfully appeal their original result had often missed the start of that college year by the time they had their appeal upheld. However, as announced by Education Minister Joe McHugh yesterday, this will no longer be the case and students who appeal results will be informed much earlier of the outcome of the re-assessed exam papers by the State Examinations Commission.

Such an approach is simply common sense. It is a pity, however, that it took Rebecca Carter’s dogged stance to ensure that the kind of fiasco that she was subjected to never happens again.