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EDUCATION MINISTER NORMA Foley said there are sanctions associated with the Polymetrika International contract – the company that developed the calculated Leaving Certificate code.
At a press conference with the minister yesterday, it was confirmed that the “original value” of the contract with the Canadian company was €75,000.
An official from the Department of Education said that “the expenditure to date” is €160,000.
Not all the expenditure lies with the department but also with the State Examinations Commission as the contract was originally placed back in the “contingency planning days” in April, an official stated.
Asked about sanctions, the minister told TheJournal.ie that there “are there penalties in relation to this… absolutely”.
However, the government’s focus “is very much so on ensuring the error that has occurred is corrected, the principle concern of the students”.
The department has said it is not focusing on what is owed back to the government in relation to the code bought by the State, with one official stating “we are not looking at those issues yet”.
“In terms of looking at any sanctions or looking at the contract”, one official said the focus now is on the students and their grades.
It emerged yesterday that two errors were found in the code responsible for calculating the grades of this year’s Leaving Cert students.
The errors are estimated to have impacted the grades of approximately 6,500 students.
Education Minister Norma Foley said that those who received a higher grade “will not be affected in any way” and that those who were marked down “will have their proper grade restored”.
The identified error was in the code provided by the company Polymetrika International, Foley said yesterday.
Reporters were told that the working group in the department had been seeking alternatives to the Leaving Cert since the onset of the pandemic when it became clear the State exams might not go ahead. On 8 May, a decision for calculated grades to be rolled out was agreed, said the minister.
Since then, an independent steering committee, an international external reviewer Dr Janet Browne of the Scottish Qualifications Authority and the Education Research Centre (ERS), were all part of the oversight of the scheme.
The ERS carried out checks but “did do sampling checks of the coding”, according to the minister, who said there were “several layers of validation checks”.
The September report from the National Standardisation Group to the Independent Steering Committee and the Programme Board notes over 40 variants of the model were tested.
It also notes that Dr Kentaro Yamamoto was appointed as a technical adviser to provide a “level of contingency cover for Polymetrika” on the standardisation process and to provide expert advice and oversight regarding data integrity.
At the press briefing yesterday, it was confirmed that between May and August the model and code was being developed, with officials stating it would have been “impossible” to run a full code and data check.
The calculated grade code was “new” and “not bought off the shelf”, said one official.
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“It emerged yesterday that two errors were found in the code responsible for calculating the grades of this year’s Leaving Cert students”.
what the Journal is not saying is that the minister kept it secret from the Cabinet meeting last Tuesday
and they sprinkle it with the costs and expenditure just to deflect more
the error was well known before privately before yesterday
No penalty for Norma though in not disclosing the
@Kavsie: I am sure she is a nice lady but I honestly believe she has no idea whats going on from the time she wakes up in the morning to the time she goes back to sleep at night. She seems to be way out of her depth.
@David Corrigan:
The Monochrome Minister!
All the IT and software expertise in this country and we get a Canadian company to provide this fairly basic software utility.
Class action lawsuit anyone?
@Thomas Sheridan: That is exactly what people should be asking. Why a Canadian company? A quick google for ‘how many software companies in Ireland’ returned 900. Shop Local, Stay Local, Travel Local…the economy is suffering… but pay a Canadian company 75k to develop software which clearly wasn’t tested. The requirement was to take the best 2 subjects, and they took the worst 2 …
@Thomas Sheridan: procurement is transparently sourced in public service, it’s part of being in EU. Irish companies likely bid themselves out of it by charging higher rates, I’ve seen it before.
@Forest Hump: Could well have been the case .. perhaps they included testing in their proposal? ;)
@Thomas Sheridan: Not defending the government in any way, but perhaps they went abroad to remove any possibility being accused of bias. As has been stated there are hundreds of IT firms in Ireland and guaranteed that most people in them will know someone doing the leaving cert this year…
@Brian Cunningham: they would have gone with the lowest quote. I doubt many companies in Ireland would have the capacity to do this sort of work in the timeframes that were required.
@Brian Cunningham: you obviously don’t understand there are rules for tenders. You can’t randomly add a factor like the Irish companies will have staff effected by this. Can you imagine if the banks or social welfare insisted no Irish residents worked in IT because they may help out friends and family.
@ed w: no there is a whole host of criteria and prices is just one. Everybody knows that cheapest isn’t best. Will have to look up the tender to see why they won rather than random “theories” without any knowledge of actual processes
@Craic_a_tower: it’s worth 40/50% in some cases
The problem was with the DATA, provided by the Dept? It was bottom 2 not top 2? Pretty important. Check the baseline data, if you check anything.
She reminds me of Mrs Doyle, “Would you like a cup of tea Father?”
Nothing surprising here, was a fiasco from start to whenever this will finish.
Where did they get this Minister from ? Never heard of her compared to the old reliables of Mc grath Collins calleary etc
@Dave Byrne: It’s called gender balance, not who’s best for the job. I’m all for best for the job, let them be a man or woman. She’s clearly out of her depth. A first time TD propelled to a Ministerial job immediately.
“It emerged yesterday that two errors were found in the code responsible for calculating the grades of this year’s Leaving Cert students”.
what the Journal is not saying is that the minister kept it secret from the Cabinet meeting last Tuesday
and they sprinkle it with the costs and expenditure just to deflect more
the error was well known privately before yesterday
To be fair she is not responsible for this clusterf**ck. Why did they not go ahead with the exams with all the spare capacity in schools with no Junior Cert and all the spare room in Community Centres, Hotels etc. The Government should know that leaving it to technology is frought with danger as the electronic voting fiasco demonstrates.
Having worked in software for over 20 years I can say the majority of faults are a result of the business not clearly defining their requirements. Standard practice is to put in a low bid on the work being defined knowing the business will change their mind and then charging heavily for that additional work. It is next to impossible to prove an IT company didn’t deliver what was requested as there is a sign off process where the business sign off on what was delivered. If you produce software and the business test it and find no problems how can you say the software company didn’t deliver what the business wanted? The business has to give all the details and scenarios And that is where you cannot blame the software company. No penalties will be paid if the software company challenges.
There are different approaches to coding and programming – in this the “quick and dirty” approach may have been used. Appropriate if the programme is for a one-off use (which it was) and the cost of failure is low (which it wasn’t). To be fair to the minister – she would not make the decisions at this level. It may be a case of “wrong place at wrong time” from her perspective. That doesn’t mean I’m saying she knows what she’s doing – it just wouldn’t have made a difference if she did.
@Conall: Mistakes will inevitably appear in new systems but surely this should have been caught by running some test scenarios and comparing the actual results to the predicted results?
@Conall:
There were only a few variables for inclusion in overall Calculated Grades mix from Junior Cert Grades database for students: best two of English, Irish, Maths, and exclude Civil, Social and Political Education (CSPE) grades from the calcs altogether!
Instead, lowest two of EIM were included, and CSPE grades were factored in for overall search check for highest two.
It beggars belief that so many highly paid officials and advisors to The Department of Education missed this in advance cross-checks with that Canadian Service provider, confirming that the process would actually deliver correct and accurate results for the students.
Arent checks better than penalties? Why wasnt it tested by tge deprt? Or independantly?
Typical ofvstate funded projects no one with expertise overseeing projects.
@Aidan Conway: Syntax error in statement 1. Unrecognised identifier(s) in statement 2. Unrecognised identifier(s) in statement 4.
I’ll be amazed if there’s only 2 errors found given the short amount of time given to develop this code.
Companies often spend longer testing their code than the time given to produce this one and there are often still lingering bugs found well after release.
This whole saga has been a no-win situation from the start with students, parents, teachers, civil servants and politicians going to be on the wrong side no matter what was decided.
You could run every scenario possible on a supercomputer from going ahead with the LC in June to calculated grades and still not come up with a solution that would please all.
The pathetic thing from my point of view is the amount of people with no skin in the game desperate to jump in and knife whoever in the back for their own pleasure / gain.
have your say