Junior Cert Examiners Didn’t Do Their Sums

The Irish State Examinations Commission have admitted that a series of embarrassing errors may have marred the exams of many students being examined his year.
The most serious incident to effect Tipperary Junior Cert business students, was their inability, through no fault of their own, to correctly work out a cash-flow question on the higher-level business paper. This was due to incorrect figures being provided on the scheduled exam paper.

According to teachers, some confused students wasted over half an hour trying to reconcile these incorrect figures provided in Part B of Question 6 on the ‘Higher Level – Paper Two’, test sheet.

Serious questions are now being raised as to the quality of proof readers used by the Commission and pressure is growing for a rescheduling of the exam from the business teacher fraternity.
However, the Commission state that there is no question of the Junior Certificate business studies exam being rescheduled, despite three errors on this afternoon exam sheet. The Commission also state that while they regret the mistake, the impact of the error will be taken into account when the marking of the examination is undertaken.

It is now understood that the State Examinations Commission have issued a further alert to Exam Superintendents regarding a further error in next Monday’s Leaving Cert Higher Accounting exam paper. This error will now be corrected by supervisors when the exam papers are distributed on Monday next.

The State Examinations Commission is responsible for the development, assessment, accreditation and certification of the second-level examinations of the Irish state: the Junior Certificate and the Leaving Certificate. The State Examinations Commission is a non-departmental public body under the aegis of the Department of Education and Skills.

In general, Teachers say many Leaving Cert papers were much tougher and less predictable this year over previous years.
Approximately 116,334 students are sitting exams at almost 4,700 examination centres, countywide, this year.