Mock Prices

electric applause · 01-02-2014 7:14pm #1

I didn't think this would be relevant in the other Mocks thread, seeing as its mostly about hints.

I just went onto the Examcraft site and priced my papers.
7 physical mock papers cost €2 each and they're €7.50 each to get corrected.
So in total it costs around €66.50 for my mocks, but my school is charging us €115 for them! Its ridiculous.

Fair enough, postage and CDs for listening tests etc will cost a bit more, but nowhere near the €50 (give or take) extra that they're charging us! Money is tight on the whole country and the fact that mocks arent covered by medical card will put a hell of a lot of families in a tough situation. Thankfully, my family can afford to pay for my mocks (however, €115 is still a lot of money to us) but there are some people out there that cant.

What's the situation like in your schools? I'm curious to know if its just my school that's ripping us off :mad:

Noccy_Mondy · 01-02-2014 7:27pm

Are they corrected by your teachers in school, or sent off to be corrected? With that price I'm assuming they will be sent off. In that case, the correctors aren't going to correct them for nothing!

electric applause · 01-02-2014 7:28pm

Noccy_Mondy wrote: »

Are they corrected by your teachers in school, or sent off to be corrected? With that price I'm assuming they will be sent off. In that case, the correctors aren't going to correct them for nothing!

It says on the site though that its €7.50 per paper to be corrected

joebloggs32 · 01-02-2014 7:30pm

electric applause wrote: »

I didn't think this would be relevant in the other Mocks thread, seeing as its mostly about hints.

I just went onto the Examcraft site and priced my papers.
7 physical mock papers cost €2 each and they're €7.50 each to get corrected.
So in total it costs around €66.50 for my mocks, but my school is charging us €115 for them! Its ridiculous.

Fair enough, postage and CDs for listening tests etc will cost a bit more, but nowhere near the €50 (give or take) extra that they're charging us! Money is tight on the whole country and the fact that mocks arent covered by medical card will put a hell of a lot of families in a tough situation. Thankfully, my family can afford to pay for my mocks (however, €115 is still a lot of money to us) but there are some people out there that cant.

What's the situation like in your schools? I'm curious to know if its just my school that's ripping us off :mad:

7.50 is for one paper, so Maths, English and Irish would be 15 each.
Also does your school provide scripts?

Days 298 · 01-02-2014 7:31pm

Probably another involuntary voluntary contribution schools seem to have.

electric applause · 01-02-2014 7:36pm

No, the scripts cost €2

So taking into account both papers for english, irish and maths, I have 10 scripts.
So €20 for scripts and €75 adds up to €95...so just a €20 surplus, which isn't so bad.

I didn't even think of the second papers. But where is the extra money going? €20 doesn't seem like an awful lot but it all adds up.

"Involuntary voluntary contribution" is exactly how to describe it.

seavill · 01-02-2014 8:13pm

electric applause wrote: »

No, the scripts cost €2

So taking into account both papers for english, irish and maths, I have 10 scripts.
So €20 for scripts and €75 adds up to €95...so just a €20 surplus, which isn't so bad.

I didn't even think of the second papers. But where is the extra money going? €20 doesn't seem like an awful lot but it all adds up.

"Involuntary voluntary contribution" is exactly how to describe it.

Also have to take into account the cost of the paper you write on, along with general paper, need graph paper, special paper for accounting etc.
Also postage costs a fortune when being sent away. Any post is done by weight so add in the cost of 30 P1 Maths plus 30 P2 maths plus all your other subjects, You would eat into that €20 very quickly (one little envelope with one A4 sheet in it is 60c for a stamp)

spurious · 01-02-2014 9:53pm

The CDs are very expensive from the Mock companies, plus the stationery.

Sucette! · 01-02-2014 11:11pm

In my school, we pay €3 for exam stationary, and that's it. Same at JC level. But they pay €2 because they get smaller booklets to write into.

They're all either examcraft or DEB, depends on teachers own preference, although I do know one or two teachers prefer to make their own papers. They're all sent away to get corrected or if the teachers want they can correct them themselves, but we don't pay anything. The money comes out of the school expenses we pay at the start of the each year, (€130)

Can't complain really!

Calvin · 02-02-2014 1:27am

We pay €100, we bring in our own stationary and supply our own paper/log tables etc. €7.50 per paper from OP totals to be €67.50 including paper twos. They're sent away to be corrected and there is over 400 students from JC and LC. Total intake is €40,000.

spurious · 02-02-2014 10:55am

People in the schools where you have to pay, do they make allowances for people on medical cards?

They don't have to pay for the real thing, so I'd find it a bit much if they have to pay for the badly put together papers and poor levels of correction that the mock companies provide.

In our school we charged the students nothing. Minority subject papers were set by the teachers themselves, everything was corrected in house and it still cost us between 2 and 3 grand for the papers, stationery, maps, CDs etc. for about 90 JC and 90 LC and LCA.

I remember the CDs and DVDs for certain subjects were a mad price, considering you can get blank CDs and DVDs so cheaply - and we might have had 6-10 centres going on, depending on the subject and children entitled to readers, scribes etc. so we'd have to get enough.

electric applause · 02-02-2014 12:26pm

We've an average sized school with about 450 students, however for some reason, our LC year ended up only having 25 students (there was only twelve in my TY year, and the majority of the year behind us did TY the following year)

That being said, theres a big JC year (in comparison) with about 60 students.
We're all in the one exam hall, no special centres are provided for the students that require it because "its only the mocks" (and in all fairness, I dont think there is anyone that needs it. Dyslexic students are given like half an hour extra per exam or something but thats it really.)

We have to provide all our own stationary, log tables etc and the juniors have to pay about €50 more than us, because they do 9 subjects instead of 7, which is a ridiculous amount of extras.

I know from my junior cert mocks how badly they are corrected. i'm fairly confident with my Gaeilge but my JC Mock result was 36%...shocked wasnt the word. Turns out that when my scripts were returned, they had only corrected paper 2. Cluaistuiscint and paper one were totally disregarded. I wasnt the only one that it happened to either, the first page of my friends answer booklet was corrected and the rest of it wasnt touched. Unbelievable.

randylonghorn · 03-02-2014 9:50pm

electric applause wrote: »

Unbelievable.

I wish it was!

lostatsea · 04-02-2014 4:33pm

There are many schools around the country where teachers correct their own papers. This makes a lot of sense because it gives teachers an idea of the weaknesses that need to be addressed when teaching their pupils coming up to the LC.

In these schools, some teachers bring in outside papers but most teachers make up their own. Good teachers usually insist on this. As a result, student pay nothing. This is the way it should be.

Days 298 · 04-02-2014 5:25pm

lostatsea wrote: »

There are many schools around the country where teachers correct their own papers. This makes a lot of sense because it gives teachers an idea of the weaknesses that need to be addressed when teaching their pupils coming up to the LC.

In these schools, some teachers bring in outside papers but most teachers make up their own. Good teachers usually insist on this. As a result, student pay nothing. This is the way it should be.

Teachers correcting papers only works if the students trust the teacher. I have had some teachers who if they were given my mock paper and saw my name on it Id dismiss the result immediately. My Irish teacher and I dont get on as from day 1 I havent been counting it. As a result I ignore his dire warnings and I will take my mock results with a pinch of salt.

Id rather most of my teachers corrected my mocks. Luckily they are and hopefully will have advice etc at my PT meeting.

rm212 · 04-02-2014 5:38pm

In my school, they are charging us the crazy price of €50 for just the papers. They are then corrected in-house. Between over 100 students, the CDs work out very little and many of the papers from the exam craft order form are 1 euro each. It works costing maximum 14 per student with 5CDs and a huge amount of paper stationary taken into account. This is in addition to the 'compulsory' €140 fee at the start of the year.

I have medical card and my mum just cannot afford this at the moment. The secretaries however have sent her 3 texts and called twice in regards to paying the fees. I don't think its very fair what the school is doing when money is tight, on top of the 140 fee at the start of the year. They even begin demanding this 12 months in advance for incoming first years (my brother is going next year). They gave a February deadline for this fee (as in, the February before the student enters in September).

jwcurtin · 04-02-2014 8:19pm

Cost €90 in our school, including all stationery, log books etc. Teachers also photocopy the English version of the paper for us, seeing as we'll be doing most of them as Gaeilge. The choice subjects will be corrected in-house, and Maths, Irish, English and French will be sent off.

Mock Prices

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