State body apologises for errors in Leaving and Junior Certificate exams

The body that prepares State examination papers has apologised for errors that were discovered in mathematics papers at Leaving and Junior Certificate level.

The State Examinations Commission confirmed there were four errors identified in maths papers completed by students yesterday and last Friday. It apologised for the errors, describing them as "most regrettable" and acknowledged that they could have caused distress and confusion for some students.

The commission accepted that one of the four errors related to a mismatch between the syllabus studied by the students and the syllabus tested in the papers.

It rejected claims by the Irish Maths Teachers Association, however, that there were other mistakes of this kind, caused by the change from the old maths course to the new Project Maths course work. "The [commission] is satisfied that all of the material referred to is on the relevant syllabus," it said.

It said there were a range of procedures in place to “enhance reliability and to minimise error”. It remained an “unfortunate fact” however that errors could arise from time to time.

“The aspiration of any examining body, including the [commission] is to preside over a system that is completely error free,” it said in a statement.

“However it is recognised in examining circles that this will always be an aspiration rather than a completely achievable goal.”

Errors such as those acknowledged by the commission previously prompted reviews of existing procedures in order to improve quality. Such mistakes both minor and major continue to happen however.

Major upsets have been caused to the conduct of the State examinations. For example last year, there was a map error on the geography paper and the wrong CD was handed out for Irish. In 2010 an accounting paper was missing a section and contained an unsolvable question, and in 2009 there was a mistake on the Leaving Cert music paper and a leak of the English paper.

Procedures tightened
After the 2009 event, which caused the commission to cancel the planned paper and distribute a back-up paper, procedures were tightened. The commission is in a position to replace any of the examinations at the last moment in order to protect the integrity of the examination system.

Smaller mistakes are relatively commonplace however. More than 70 such mistakes occurred in Leaving Cert papers between 2009 and 2011.

Irish teachers have also identified what they claim are grammatical mistakes in questions relating to John Fitzgerald Kennedy in this year’s Leaving Cert Irish higher paper 2.

These were confirmed by the commission last night.

While it tries to reduce errors to a minimum, it points to the challenge of preparing, distributing and marking the examination papers each year. It prepared 44 different maths papers this year, 20 at Junior cycle and 24 at Leaving.

Separate from these are another 44 “contingency papers” ready for use in the event of a security breach, the commission said.

“The number of examination papers produced this year is double the normal annual requirement due to the particular stage in the roll out of Project Maths.”

Student stress
Even so such errors have the potential to impact on students, at the very least by the stress they may cause. It acknowledged this in its statement, pointing out that one of its core principles was that "students cannot be disadvantaged as a result of an error".

The nature of the error and its possible impact are taken into account by the chief examiner when completing the marking scheme for the subject involved.