No €6,750-a-year JP McManus scholarships for calculated grades
VALUABLE college scholarships, sponsored by billionaire JP McManus, will not be awarded on the basis of calculated grades, in a major blow to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The €6,750-a-year awards are presented to highestachieving Leaving Cert candidates from low-income families, to help pay for the costs of college.
Each year, 100 scholarships are presented, to at least two students from each of the 32 counties, who have put in an outstanding Leaving Cert or A-Level performance.
The decision by the trustees of the All-Ireland Scholarships programme will come as a huge disappointment to hardworking sixth-year students who had their eyes on the prize.
The annual payment continues for the duration of undergraduate studies, most often in the areas of medicine, engineering and science. About 1,500 students have benefited since the programme was established in 2008.
Recipients must attend a non-fee-paying school and be exempt from the Leaving Certificate fee, which means the family is in receipt of a medical card.
The trustees of the programme have announced that they will review the situation once the full particulars of the deferred Leaving Cert exams for 2020 and the number of students participating are known.
One of the trustees, Gerard Boland, told the
Irish Independent that “we want to be fair, we have to be fair”, in awarding the scholarships and while “we looked at calculated grades very thoroughly, they are, substantially, a matter of opinion”.
He said even CAO points were not accurate enough for determining scholarship winners, and said the normal process was highly prescriptive, involving competition between students based on the actual marks they achieved in five papers.
Students are scored out of 2,100 points, with up to 400 marks for each paper and an extra 100 for maths. Recipients usually score at least 1,800 points.
While the awards are sponsored by JP McManus, the Department of Education administers the programme in the Republic.
Mr Boland said there was also an issue in that the calculated grades process “didn’t really end”, as there was the possibility for students to do a deferred Leaving Cert.
Calculated grades are also being used to assess schoolleavers in Northern Ireland this year and scholarships are not being awarded there either.