Overpriced mock exams!?

anna_x

My brother goes to a different school than me and my mum is going to have to fork out over €170 to pay for his junior cert mock exam for the papers and to have it corrected externally. I think this is a rediculous amount of money. I'm in lc and In my school some teachers do them but you only pay a few euros for the paper and the teacher corrects it themselves. I think it's a rediculous waste of money. Thoughts?

spurious

I can assure you it is the mock companies are making the money, not the people correcting the papers.

I know one of the mock companies charges schools/students €8.00 for each paper corrected and pays the corrector €2.00 after tax. The other company is not quite as bad, but still they are raking in profits.

I always thought the mocks were a bit of a waste of time with my classes. If they wanted to know how they would do, I could tell them from the standard of their homework and classwork.

Anyone on a medical card who is exempt from paying the actual exam fee should also be exempt from the mock fees. If someone is on a low enough income to qualify for a medical card, then 170 euro is a huge amount of mney to have to come up with.

pinkbear

I don't think the mock companies are making as much money as you think. If they pay the correctors " 2 after tax", that's 4 before tax. They also pay to get the papers written, and the going rate is about 2000/subject. The papers are all checked by a few teachers, all paid, and the art work is done by a graphic artist who also has to be paid. I'd say if they charge the schools 8/paper, the actual cost is about 6/paper. I know when they sell thousands of papers it's a good business for them, but my point is that they are not cleaning up the way people think they are.

pinkbear

I don't think the mock companies are making as much money as you think. If they pay the correctors " 2 after tax", that's 4 before tax. They also pay to get the papers written, and the going rate is about 2000/subject. The papers are all checked by a few teachers, all paid, and the art work is done by a graphic artist who also has to be paid. I'd say if they charge the schools 8/paper, the actual cost is about 6/paper. I know when they sell thousands of papers it's a good business for them, but my point is that they are not cleaning up the way people think they are.

tuisginideach

€125 in my son's school which I thought was very high.

seavill

pinkbear wrote: »

I don't think the mock companies are making as much money as you think. If they pay the correctors " 2 after tax", that's 4 before tax. They also pay to get the papers written, and the going rate is about 2000/subject. The papers are all checked by a few teachers, all paid, and the art work is done by a graphic artist who also has to be paid. I'd say if they charge the schools 8/paper, the actual cost is about 6/paper. I know when they sell thousands of papers it's a good business for them, but my point is that they are not cleaning up the way people think they are.

The exam questions are copy and paste jobs from past exam papers with slight alterations. Not exactly a taxing job each year to create and going by how some are put together I'd suggest that it may not even be teachers putting them together