ALMOST 8,500 STUDENTS made appeals against close to 19,000 individual results in this year’s Leaving Cert exams, with more than one in five being upheld.

The results of these appeals will be available to candidates from 11 am this morning.

The State Examinations Commission says this issue date of the appeal results ensures that it integrates with the process for entry to higher education through the Central Applications Office (CAO).

The CAO will be issuing its Round 5 offers on Tuesday 11 October.

The appeal results have already been transmitted to the CAO and are also issued to schools at the same time as they are available to candidates.

First ‘normal’ examinations since covid

The SEC notes that 2022 is the first year that the examinations have “ran as normal” since 2019, when 9,049 candidates appealed 16,969 individual exam results.

This year, 8,477 candidates have made appeals against 18,760 individual results.

While the number of candidates appealing results decrease by 6% when compared to 2019, the number of individual results appeals has increase by close to 11%.

Meanwhile, a further 3,051 candidates followed the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme, which is distinct from the Leaving Cert and has an emphasis on continuous assessment rather than end of year exams.

Fewer than five candidates appealed these results.

Appeal process

14% of this year’s 58,056 Leaving Cert candidates made an appeal against one or more results.

Meanwhile, 4.6% of the 410,162 individual results were appealed.

In the processing of appeals, each candidate’s work is fully reviewed question by question using the original marking scheme.

The review is carried out by a different examiner to the one who originally marked the work.

Of the 18,760 appeals against individual results, 3,769 were upgraded, meaning more than 20% of the appeals were successful.

However, the SEC notes that the 3,769 upgrades equates to less than 1% of the total number of Leaving Cert results issued this year.

There was also one downgrade awarded in this year’s appeals process.

In a statement to The Journal, the SEC said: “To ensure fairness for all candidates, the marks obtained by candidates in the appeals process have been subjected to the same form of post marking adjustment as the marks obtained during the original marking process.”

Candidates can view their remarked examination scripts if they wish, but must complete an application form that is available on the SEC website and return it by 5pm on 10 October.

This will be facilitated through the Candidate portal where possible and in the case of manually marked material, such as certain portfolios, these may be returned to schools to facilitate the viewing.

There was no charge to appeal results this year, in line with the Education Minister Norma Foley’s decision that no fees would be charged for the 2022 examinations.

Meanwhile, the SEC noted that quality assurance checks this year have resulted in 60 candidates, who had not appealed their result, receiving an upgrade.

These candidates will also be notified of the change in grade later this morning.

Post appeals

If a candidate who opts to view their remarked examination scripts is still unhappy, they can refer their appeal to a panel of Independent Appeal Scrutineers, who are fully independent of the SEC.

However, a candidate does not need to view their remarked script to apply to the Independent Appeals Scrutineers.

The deadline for applying to the IAS is 5pm on Friday, 21 October.

The Scrutineers review the entire processing of the appeal and application forms for an appeal review by the Independent Appeal Scrutineers is available to download from the SEC website.

All decisions of the SEC, including appeals, are open to review by the Office of the Ombudsman, or in the case of candidates under 18 years of age, by the Ombudsman for Children.

With additional reporting from Eoghan Dalton