Exam papers: The State Examination Commission runs a very tight ship to ensure every exam student has an equal chance, writes Louise Holden
Plath or Hopkins? Bishop or Boland? What would you give for just a hint of what's coming this afternoon? A juicy morsel, like leaked exam content, would probably hit Bebo faster than a Brangelina break-up.
With over 114,000 students expected to sit State exams this year, speculation about the content of the papers is feverish. Only a privileged handful really know what's coming, right? Wrong.
Examination papers pass through thousands of hands before they get to the student. There are so many examiners, typesetters, printers, proofreaders and packers involved it's a miracle that information leaks are not commonplace.
There are 90 separate examination subjects involving 250 different testing tools including written, oral, aural, practical, project and portfolio exams.
This amounts to 1.8 million individual test items to be examined. A total of three million examination papers will be circulated over the coming month.
An operation on this scale involves a lot of people. As well as the 180 permanent staff working at the State Examination Commission, 11,000 contract staff are required every year to operate the exam process.
This comprises 4,600 superintendents, 6,000 examiners (4,000 written examiners, 1,000 oral examiners and 1,000 practical examiners) and 575 drafters, setters and translators.
With so many students, teachers and parents simply dying to know what's on the paper, and so many operatives coming into contact with those papers, how has this massive operation remained watertight?
After an internal review in 2003, the Department of Education elected to establish an independent body to run the examinations process.
The State Examination Commission is now in its third full year of operation, and in that period there has never been a known breach of security.
The press officer with the State Examinations Commission, Andrea Feeney, describes a very tight ship.
"Only people who need to have access to the papers are given access and they are all vetted carefully," says Ms Feeney, who claims that no individual with an immediate family member taking part in examinations is allowed to see papers.
"Staff or contract employees with a family interest in the exams declare that interest and stand down in the year in question," she explains.
"This applies to everyone involved in the process, from the examiners to the typesetters, printers and packers."
The journey of an exam paper is a long one, starting in January with the first examiner's draft.
From that point the papers are redrafted, proof-read, edited, printed, packed into envelopes, packed into boxes and delivered to the superintendents at each of over 4,000 test centres.
With so many parties handling the papers at various times, how does the commission ensure that no information escapes?
"Security measures at the exam centre, where most of the handling takes place, are very tight," says Ms Feeney.
"The packers have no reason to look at the content of the papers - there is no information provided on the front or the back. Their work is overseen and they are not allowed to bring mobile phones into the packing room."
The printing process is more difficult to police as it happens off site, but the chosen printing premises are carefully inspected.
The name of the printing company is never made public in case employees should come under pressure from over zealous students or their parents. The anonymity of the 6,000 examiners setting the questions is also absolute.
In recent years the number of people involved in the exam process has grown a little with increased demand for translators, IT specialists and other operatives. The same stringent vetting procedures apply in all cases.
The key element of security, Ms Feeney concedes, is the integrity of those involved, but it doesn't stop the commission taking every measure available to them.
"At this time of the year the exam centre in Athlone is like Fort Knox. The building was custom designed for this purpose and key areas are secured for examination storage.
"Only authorised and named personnel have access to the areas: their identities are absolutely confidential. I can't even tell you how many there are."
By the time the papers reach the exams centres they are sealed and tamper proof. Two students at each centre are required to sign a declaration stating that the packs have not been interfered with prior to official opening.
There are checks and safeguards all along the way to ensure that Plath, Boland et al keep their secrets until the last possible minute.
There's further safeguard in operation too - criminal sanctions in the case of a deliberate breach. Under the provisions of the Education Act, 1998, prior disclosure of examination material is a criminal offence.
"Anyone who passes on information about the content of exam papers is risking a prison sentence of up to five years," Ms Feeney warns.
Where a leak is suspected, it becomes a matter for gardaí. During the Leaving Cert of 2003 the Department of Education received an allegation about the prior disclosure of parts of the aural examination in Irish.
The incident was investigated in the following way.
Exam scripts were marked as usual, and then a detailed analysis was conducted of the candidates' performance.
The students who were suspected of having received prior information, through their class teacher in this case, had their performances in the aural section of the exam analysed in detail.
On the basis of the analysis, the department was, at that time, satisfied that no adjustment was warranted to those candidates' grades.
Andrea Feeney is confident that breaches would not go unnoticed as the commission monitors the situation very carefully.
"Once information like this is released, it very quickly becomes public property," she contends.
With students on mobiles, in internet chatrooms, on school buses and street corners, the merest slip of the lip could rage around Ireland in a heartbeat.
Stay tuned.
