LEAVING CERT PROFILING ‘UNDER REVIEW’
SOCIO-ECONOMIC profiling of calculated grades for the Leaving Certificate is being reconsidered, following the furore in England and Scotland, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has confirmed.
Mr Martin said the Government was now looking at different ways to standardise results and would hold briefings with the Opposition before finalising the matter. During RTÉ’s Today With Claire Byrne programme, he said: ‘A decision was taken in May, by the outgoing Government, to have this predicted grade system… and it did at that stage include student profiling.’
Mr Martin said this student profiling was now under review, but that no final decisions had been made yet.
In Scotland and England, many students found their results downgraded by an algorithm designed to standardise results. Students from disadvantaged areas got the biggest downgrades, before a decision was made to revert to the teachers’ original grades.
Ann Piggott, president of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland, said the union would like to know what process is being used to determine grades.
Labour Party education spokesman Aodhán Ó Ríordáin called on the Government to publish the model for the predicted grade system. He said it is ‘very concerning that the Taoiseach could not explain how the Government will avoid the same mess that occurred all over the UK where thousands of students had their results downgraded due to school profiling’.