ACCOUNTING BLUNDER:THERE WAS no evidence to suggest Leaving Cert students who were presented with incomplete accounting exam papers were disadvantaged by the blunder, the State Examinations Commission has concluded.
A total of 219 candidates at exam centres in south Dublin – including Blackrock College, CBC Monkstown, Clonkeen College and St Andrew’s – received a paper with key sections missing when they sat the exam earlier this summer.
Minister for Education Mary Coughlan ordered the commission, which sets and distributes exam papers, to investigate the accounting error, as well as a question on the Junior Cert business exam which some 24,000 candidates could not work out because incorrect figures were provided.
The issues followed a further blunder last year when a Leaving Cert English paper had to be rescheduled after the wrong paper was distributed – the commission was not responsible for the error.
In its report into this year’s problems, the commission said the mistakes were both due to human error.
The accounting exam mistake, it said, was the result of an error in the collating process which affected one of the 24 boxes of papers printed by the commission.
The report said the error was noticed shortly after the exam got under way, and replacement papers had been distributed in the hour it would have taken candidates to complete the mandatory first question. It noted the commission received a considerable amount of contact from schools, students and parents saying the candidates had been disadvantaged by the error.
The report concludes: “There is no evidence that the printing error impacted negatively on the centres examined.” On the business paper error, the report also stated: “There have been no adverse effects on candidate outcomes.”
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