Concern after 994 students fail to register
Almost 1,000 Leaving Cert candidates have not registered on the calculated grades portal.
When the extended deadline passed at noon yesterday, 60,035 of 61,029 students who had entered for the June exams had signed up.
The calculated grades system was devised to replace the summer Leaving Cert exams, which have been cancelled because of Covid-19.
Even though they haven’t registered, teachers will award estimated marks and rankings for all students.
The marks/rankings will be based on what teachers believe a student would have achieved had they sat the exams in June. They will then go through a national standardisation process.
Every year there is a cohort of students who entered for the Leaving Cert, but, ultimately, did not sit the exams.
Along with students who, for one reason or another, have disengaged, the 994 may include candidates repeating a single subject and did not feel the need to register, a key purpose of which was to confirm the level at which a student wished to be assessed in each subject.
The Department of Education will continue to engage with schools in an effort to establish why some students may not have registered and to establish if there were reasons that some students could not.
A department spokesperson said part of that work would be to ensure that all students who wished to receive calculated grades were supported.
Students who have provided contact details through the portal will be contacted when it is time to indicate if they wish to opt-in to receive their calculated grades.
The department hopes to issue the calculated grades as close as possible to the usual timeframe for the exam results.