The news is now confirmed. The Leaving Cert has been postponed and students will be able to avail of a ‘calculated grade’ based on "the combination of school information about a student’s expected performance in an examination and national data available in relation to the performance of students in examinations over a period of time."
While, this process has been described by the government as "A professional judgement of each student’s attainment which will be subjected to a rigorous in-school alignment process to ensure fairness," and will require the school principal to approve the estimated scores and ranking of each student, we think that comedian Stevie Cahill's approach might be funnier.
All jokes aside, the full details of the situation for Leaving Cert students include the establishment of a special unit in the Department of Education to process all the data from each school to "national standardisation." The Department are also at pains to point out that the grade will be not decided by the the teacher alone:
Hislop adds: It's not a teacher grade, it's an all-school grade.
Department's hope is to take the sense of pressure/responsibility off the teacher by making the school collectively responsible for the grade, though the teacher's own insight and analysis is the starting point
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) May 8, 2020
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Students will also have the option to appeal results and to sit the Leaving Cert exam at a later date. The full details of how the system will work are detailed on the Education.ie website here.
Meanwhile you can also enjoy Stevie and the rest of the Fupin Eejits' other Leaving Cert sketch from glory years gone by, when we could all leave the house the peace.