Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2020-10-01
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Norma Foley (FF), Kerry

The Deputy asked when the information was disseminated. As he is aware, the anomaly was first discovered on Tuesday of last week and the calculated grades office was informed. All that the office was informed of at that stage was that there was an anomaly. It was worked on through the night and on Wednesday morning an official of the Department was informed by the calculated grades office and the Secretary General was informed in the morning. I was then informed on Wednesday afternoon. At that point, what we knew was that an issue had arisen. That issue was an error in the code. Information about how many students it impacted, what its scope and potential might be, and who the affected students might be was not available. It was necessary that further and continuous checks be run to ensure that we had all of the information available so that we could make it available, as I accept is necessary. Following further checks on Friday, a second error was identified. At that stage, I sought and received an opportunity to source external expertise and oversight on the errors that had arisen. That was secured through a company called ETS from the United States, whose staff are international experts in the field of statistics, psychometrics and educational testing. Those checks are still running and theirs are the third pairs of eyes, if you like, on the process, along with the contractor and the calculates grades office.
We were aware that CAO offers were becoming available on Wednesday and we made the decision at that stage, as I have outlined, to release not the full information, because we still do not have it, but the information we had at that point. When we did not have the full information, it was impossible to make the information available. I wish there was more information available but we did make available on Wednesday, as soon as we had concrete data, the information that we had at the time.

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Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:38+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-10-01