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STUDENTS WHO MISSED out on college courses due to the calculated grades error have now been offered their places.
Higher education minister Simon Harris said the offers had gone out on Thursday morning.
There were 424 students who were identified by the CAO to have missed out on their desired college course due to wrongly being awarded a lower grade.
They have now been offered a place on their chosen course for the current academic year.
Minister Harris said: “I promised last week to move mountains to make sure that any student who required an additional place as a result of the calculated grades would get that place and would get that place in this academic year.
“I’m delighted to report to the committee that that’s happened.
“That every single student that had an error in their calculated grades detected by the CAO has now been offered a place this morning.”
Mr Harris again apologised for the errors, which affected an initial 6,500 Leaving Cert students, 6,100 of whom have since been awarded higher marks.
The CAO identified that 424 of those students required new offers.
Harris said he was conscious that the class of 2020 had been through a “horrifically difficult year”.
Harris made the comments at the committee on higher education today and insisted that Government would learn from its mistakes.
He said: “The idea that we wouldn’t stop and review and learn in relation to this year’s calculated grades would seem to be a bit bizarre to me.
“I’m quite sure there will be an openness in Government that any lessons that need to be learned are learned.
“This was done in real-time, in crisis mode.
“I think people worked in good faith.
“But you’d be very stupid not to stop and review it and see what went well, what didn’t go well, what needs to go better.
“We need to try and make sure that we don’t create a bubble effect next year.
“I need to try and make sure I maximise the number of places available for the class of 2021.”
Sinn Fein senator Rose Conway-Walsh raised the fact that some students had been squeezed out of places due to others wrongly being awarded higher marks.
But Mr Harris said these students would not have their results downgraded.
“We have a long-standing precedent in this country, decades-old, that nobody gets downgraded.
“Short of re-running the entire process, which I don’t think anyone would advocate for, there is no way of determining the impact of that.
“The Government, in a pandemic, thought that this was the fairest way of doing things. Is it perfect, no?
“But this was done in crisis mode, in a pandemic.
“I’m encouraged that more students than ever before have college places, have their first choice.”
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In all fairness that’s a great result.
Excellent
Great news. Congratulations and best of luck to all students beginning college in this difficult time.
To think we were laughing at the UK making a bo**ix of their calculated grades system, we then said hold my beer.
Good stuff. Delighted for those impacted but leaving very should never have been cancelled.
I’d say Simon is not missing the health portfolio these days…
Brilliant outcome. Good luck to all the students involved.
This further disadvantages the LC class-of-2019. Already hit with a new system that yielded record results and so put them at a huge disadvantage w.r.t. their LC-2020 counterparts – they are now further back in the queue because 2020 students were upgraded only (but not downgraded) because of the system errors.
Tens of thousands of them – why is nobody “moving mountains” for them ?
Simon is really a great minister what he has done in 2020! Much respect for him.
It’s a great turn around, but they should not be left out of pocket. Will they be reimbursed for fees already paid to a different college, for books and other items specific to the original course they were offered which they have paid for? Deposits on now useless accommodation?
@Dave Gillen #wearamask #noToRacism: I guess there will be a scramble for accommodation now. Only high end units left!
Good news, though tbf at this late point, they might as well defer.
@willow moon: Why?
Most colleges only started back last week or the week before and are online. the majority of lectures are recorded on blackboard or moodle.
No hassle catching up.
@willow moon: not really, a lot of courses would have started later this year anyway and even if they started the first week of September catching up is definitely doable since there’s a lot of introductory stuff in every course
@Fiona Reidy: results only released on 7th September and CAO on 11th September so they didn’t start first week .
Just out of internet and to clarify, does this mean the initial 424 students that received course places before the coding debacle have now been removed as it were or “squeezed out” fairly? Are they being reimbursed/compensated for their course fees, accommodation, and other expenses by the Department of Education per se??
@Kiern Mcx: Or did the latter 424 students get additional places in the respective courses so the initial 424 didn’t lose out on their places?
A week where this story dominated everything from the Dail to the airwaves one muppet of a TD even called for a full public inquiry costing millions never mind the amount of calls for the Ministers head.
This actually affected only 450 out of 60,000 students and they now all have been sorted within two weeks .
We really do need to cop ourselves on and calm down on the indignant outrage for a small bit.
Not my Daughter! 2 points short for Pharmacy due to downgrade in Chemistry not to mention points through the roof this year! Teacher gave her H1 no word on her appeal she got H2!
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