Thursday 4 June 2009

Leaving Cert English Exam "leak" causes chaos

You’d think it was a handy number within a handy number – and how difficult could it be? You turn up at a school hall with a batch of exam papers and pass them around to expectant Leaving Cert students, then sit back and read the Indo for a couple of hours.

But the fact that an exam supervisor in Drogheda yesterday handed out Leaving Cert English Paper II, instead of Leaving Cert English Paper I, means that the system has been thrown into chaos.

Before you could say “Iambic pentameter”, a roomful of students were presented with a sneak preview of today’s planned English Paper, meaning that rumours of its contents were circulating on the web by the afternoon. Result? All the papers must be recalled and new ones set for next Saturday.

What was it teacher used to say? “Must try harder”.


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4 comments:

Ella said...

Hi GM, to distribute the incorrect English papers, the supervisor can't have read the cover sheet, which was rather remiss of him and could if one is being charitable be put down to an unfortunate error. But the supervisor compounded his mistake by choosing NOT to inform anybody of the mistake. So when the morning paper was over all the students who'd earlier received the incorrect paper went home and spread the news. And it was 2 parents of the students who informed the principal of the school in the afternoon and that set the ball rolling. Now had the supervisor informed the princpal toute suite, it's fair to assume that leaving cert students could have sat English paper 2 today instead of having to sacrifice Saturday to do so. This is a teacher who definitely didn't try hard at all to cover his blunder.

Anonymous said...

why did the supervisor have paper two in his possession on day 1?
do they have the future papers on their possession.
surely they're stored somewhere until the day they are needed and not with the examiner?

The Gombeen Man said...

Questions I asked myself, folks. And was this guy not aware of the Internet and mobile phones?

Ella said...

What's even more incredible about the whole thing is that early on Wednesday morning, an official from the State Examinations Commission (SEC) carried out a spot-check at St Oliver's Community College, Drogheda, where Mr Curran was an exam superintendent.

The official from the SEC visited each of the exam centres in the college, including the room where the blunder had been made just a short time earlier.

Despite the seriousness of what had occurred, Mr Curran did not raise the matter with the official, who left confident that all was in order.

Had the SEC official been alerted immediately, arrangements could have been made in time to allow the exam to go ahead yesterday.

Enough said.