Junior Cert Marking??

11cloud11

I'm really confused about the Junior Cert marking. I thought they just corrected them and if you get over 85% you get an A and so on ...

But my friend said there's some other marking scheme where there's actually only a certain amount of each grade they can give out so some people don't get A's even if their exam was good enough.

And apparently that's why loads of people don't get A's in CSPE when they expect to and also in Irish all the A's are taken by people from Gaelscoils and Gaeltacht areas ...

Does anyone know if this is true or how the marking really works? And is it the same for the Leaving Cert?
Thanks

Pidge96

I'm pretty sure the way it works is (I'm not expert but my teacher said something along these lines, corrections are welcome!):

When they run the State exams the marking schemes are not decided upon until the State Examinations Commission correct about 100 sample scripts. These "test corrections" usually give an indication of how the paper was received by pupils as a whole. Then chief examiners decide upon how to allocate the marks eg. If a question was found very difficult and poorly answered by the majority of candidates, the marks allocated to it are reduced accordingly, and vice versa for well-answered questions. Once the marking scheme is decided upon in the subjects, your scripts are sent to correctors. They grade them as per marking scheme and scripts are awarded an according percentage, and resultant grade ie. A,B,C.

Your friend is talking about the bell-curve, ie. Only a certain amount of A's, B's, C's can be awarded. If you look at the statistics for the Junior and Leaving Cert results you'll notice that the percentages of grades awarded don't vary too much. The system used for inputting the grades doesn't allow a radical change in percentages of Grades awarded.

For example, you couldn't have 5% of candidates getting an A in Irish one year, and 40% the next. It wouldn't be consistent. If a corrector's number of A's,B's or C's exceed the quota assigned to them by the Chief Examiner (imagine 30 scripts in English, you couldn't have 30 A's) then they revise the scripts and retain the 'best' A's of the bunch. In this case, people who may have initially gotten 85% may be pushed down, due to a high number of people performing better than they have. By contrast, in a weaker bunch some B's could be pushed up to A's or D's pushed up to C's. It's not the fairest system, granted. Then again, weaker candidates can't be all failed by a horrible examiner, just like Average/Strong candidates can't all be given A's by an overly generous examiner.

Contrary to popular belief, all the A's in Irish aren't stolen by the Gaeltacht candidates
There are people in the Gaeltacht who are taught through the medium of Irish who get B's and C's in Irish because either 1. Their test simply wasn't as good as all the other ones or 2. They got complacent and didn't learn their material! It's all relative. Just like how it's easier for someone from the Gaeltacht to get an A in Irish among candidates who don't have two words of it. In response to your other question, I think it works this way for Leaving Cert too.

Being honest though, the grades awarded in 95% of cases are fair. Don't sweat over it :cool:

spurious

The point of the bell curve is that a person who sat the JC in 2011 has as much chance of an A as someone who is sitting it this year.

Otherwise JC and LC would be like fine wine and someone with a 2006 exam could claim theirs was worth more or better than a 2008.

It's a common method used in exams.

DublinArnie

I don't think this is fair for the students though. Someone could of worked really hard and maybe answered 95% of the questions right, and then he/she gets knocked down to a B just because someone got a percent more of the questions right. I think a better system is needed, would 2015 JC be different?

cfc.forever

There will be no 2015 JC, it will be examined on a continuous basis

DublinArnie

cfc.forever wrote: »

There will be no 2015 JC, it will be examined on a continuous basis

40% on Continuous and 60% on end of three year examination .

cfc.forever

Smart one :P Oh theres always a clause with these SEC things, I was told it was a continuous basis tut tut my teachers :P