Leaving Certs think teachers may give ‘unfair grade’ in predictive assessment - Taoiseach

Predictive assessment "raises all sorts of difficulties" for Leaving Certificate students, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned.

He said some students are concerned teachers may give them an unfair grade. There is also an issue with using the results from mock exams as students would not have realised when they were held that they could be used to work out their final result.

He told People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett that it was "not impossible" to use predictive marking " but if it were done we would be dealing with a raft of issues".

Minister for Education Joe McHugh said last week the exams would go ahead now on July 29th.

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Mr Boyd Barrett asked why the Government was continuing with the exam given the uncertainty for students, most of whom wanted certification that did not require the added stress of sitting exams.

The Taoiseach also referred to what he called the “debacle” over the 189 Keelings seasonal workers arriving in the State for fruit picking jobs and said that it probably arose cause there were “many arms of Government” that had not spoken to each other.

Independent TD Thomas Pringle asked who was advising the company. "We discovered that Keelings informed the workers that it was advised 49 could be quarantined at a time."

Mr Pringle said the company told employees it had been advised by the National Public Health Emergency Team, the Government or the Department of Health. “When this information was publicised recently, Keelings reduced it to 19 people.”

The Taoiseach said “I think as far as that debacle is concerned it was probably a case of there being many arms of government, and all arms of government not having spoken to each other.

“I think that’s what went wrong there.”

There was now a much better procedure in place and anyone entering the airport has to fill in a form, declare where they are staying, give their mobile number all of those things to make sure that they self isolation and self restrict for 14 days.

“We now have a mechanism by which the Department of Justice staff can check with people to make sure that they are following those instructions.”