The Release Of This Year's Junior Cert Results Has Been Significantly Delayed
Deflate all the large 'JC2019 Results Night' helium balloons; collapse all the trestle tables bedecked with neat rows of Cadet Soda and regionally manufactured crisps for sale, inform all the private security hired to awkwardly frisk teens to discover naggins secreted about their persons - there will be no opportunistic Junior Cert Results night discos. Or at least there will be, however, they will be two weeks later than proposed, and what are ya gonna do, keep all those security staff indefinitely on retainer and leave trestle tables full of miniature soft drinks in the doorways of the Tivoli Theatre? Of course not.
The State Examinations Commission has announced that the date last year's Junior Cert students will receive their results will be 4th October. Typically, the issue date for Junior Cert results falls on a Wednesday in early-mid September.
However, schools were notified in February of this year by the SEC that the issue date for Junior Cert results would be pushed back until late September. The reasons for this initial delay were stated as a need to "prioritise activities associated with the Leaving Certificate appeals" process.
They said in this statement to schools that "The immediate priority of the SEC is to achieve the deadline of week ending 20th September it has set for issuing the results of the Leaving Certificate appeals."
The reason for the greater emphasis being placed on resolving Leaving Cert appeals follows a court case last year where a Leaving Cert student successfully sued the SEC over being issued with incorrect results. She appealed to have her results reexamined and, despite the error being rectified and her results being subsequently increased, this appeals process was so lengthy that it resulted in her losing her place in veterinary medicine in UCD. In order to improve this state of affairs, and prevent any other student following in her footsteps now that a case precedent had been established, the SEC moved for the proposed date to resolve all appeals to 20th September.
Due to this process taking longer than anticipated, the issue date for Junior Cert results has been pushed back further than initially projected - to 4th October.
One upside of this decision however is that the results will be issued on a Friday. So prepare the trestle tables; put in a bulk order for cream soda, there will be festivities after all.