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DEB Mock Exams Closure

Postgrad10

Just saw this on their website. I wonder what’s happened to fully close it down for this year. Do they expect the mocks to be cancelled completely? I assumed they’d be later in the year but no papers at all? Staff safety seems to be the concern.
https://www.debexams.ie/

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TheDriver

They didn't give a paper sample whereas examcraft did. It seems that most schools just picked examcraft as it was difficult to get to see the DEB sample.

dory

Well that's a bit of a disaster. We had an order in with them. Not sure what we'll do now. Probably too late to get an order with the other gang. We had already said the mocks may not go ahead as normal anyway.

mirrorwall14

Our whole school was going with DEB

Postgrad10

Id say ExamCraft will still help anyone out who needs papers. Yes the system for verifying teachers to see the DEB mock paper was terrible. I ended up going with my paper having not seen it because our school only goes with DEB.

I thought the mocks may just be later this year. There’s no reason to suggest it’ll be cancelled as of yet.

TheValeyard

The Deb changes meant we went with Examcraft

Postgrad10

TheValeyard wrote: »

The Deb changes meant we went with Examcraft

I don’t think that’s why they closed though.

derb12

We usually go with DEB for about two thirds of their papers. Our language teachers seem to prefer Examcraft.
I think this year it was more evenly split - I don't know if it was all the security measures.
I really liked their idea of having the fixed timetable and we were all set to go along with it especially as the mock may again turn out to be a higher stakes exam.
Very curious to see what examcraft will do now.

deiseindublin

What had DEB changed this year? I'm not in the loop at all.

RH149

They made it very difficult to log on and view the sample papers- even though you may have been registered with them for years you had to reregister and provide/upload photo ID, photo/jpeg images of your teaching council registration and I forget what else but it felt like applying for a passport.

I did all that and eventually was approved but you got limited time to look at the papers and then pretty quickly were logged out. We're a probably 70% DEB school normally but I know a lot of our staff opted for Examcraft for the first time instead. My department only stuck with DEB reluctantly as the Examcraft papers haven't been great for my subject.

I wonder do Examcraft have the capacity to now produce enough papers for the whole country...if we even get to do them at all? The leaking of the only paper available will be rampant.....

Smacruairi

If I have to correct mocks I might just pack it in

mirrorwall14

We always correct our own anyways unless you collect the payment yourself from the students and you can’t make them pay. Painful so we mostly all correct.

However I don’t really get the reasoning on this? Is it that they can’t do the correcting part of it? Or that they can’t get correctors due to Covid? Is it that they are going under and are out of money? Or that there was an issue printing the papers? Because surely they must be printed by now?why not just let schools take their papers at least?

Very confused

rainbowtrout

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

We always correct our own anyways unless you collect the payment yourself from the students and you can’t make them pay. Painful so we mostly all correct.

However I don’t really get the reasoning on this? Is it that they can’t do the correcting part of it? Or that they can’t get correctors due to Covid? Is it that they are going under and are out of money? Or that there was an issue printing the papers? Because surely they must be printed by now?why not just let schools take their papers at least?

Very confused

I wrote exam papers for DEB many years ago and I wrote them the previous summer to when they were going to be used, about July maybe, so I can't imagine that has changed. If they couldn't get correctors they could tell schools they would only be offered an exam paper service this year and no corrections and let the schools do as they please after that. If Examcraft can offer the service it can't simply be a lack of correctors.

I wonder was their business decimated this year from the restrictions they put in place which meant running exams wasn't particularly viable.

Treppen

mirrorwall14 wrote: »

We always correct our own anyways unless you collect the payment yourself from the students and you can’t make them pay. Painful so we mostly all correct.

However I don’t really get the reasoning on this? Is it that they can’t do the correcting part of it? Or that they can’t get correctors due to Covid? Is it that they are going under and are out of money? Or that there was an issue printing the papers? Because surely they must be printed by now?why not just let schools take their papers at least?

Very confused

Maybe the SEC have put in a large order :pac:

Bit sus they were terrible with releasing samples this year

rainbowtrout

Treppen wrote: »

Maybe the SEC have put in a large order :pac:

Bit sus they were terrible with releasing samples this year

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

dory

My school went to Examcraft with a begging bowl today. I'd say their website is ready to explode. No surprises for students so this year. At least they used have to figure out which company the subject department went with. For Irish it's easy enough to make up our own essays anyway so we're going to go with that. Too much at stake if it's predicted again this year.

mirrorwall14

We agreed today that the school would discuss mocks next week as the situation is too up in the air right now

DubLad69

If exam craft are able to go ahead with their mocks then I think that it's ridiculous that DEB have pulled out so close to the mocks. They didn't even both to email us, just a notice on their website. .

We had already went with examcraft for most of our mocks simply because of the amount of work involved in getting access to the papers. Now that they have done this I would imagine they will be getting very little custom next year.

mtoutlemonde

DubLad69 wrote: »

If exam craft are able to go ahead with their mocks then I think that it's ridiculous that DEB have pulled out so close to the mocks. They didn't even both to email us, just a notice on their website. .

We had already went with examcraft for most of our mocks simply because of the amount of work involved in getting access to the papers. Now that they have done this I would imagine they will be getting very little custom next year.

I got email yesterday. I think the whole problem lies in the fact that DEB annoyed too many people and orders were cut dramatically. The customer service was appalling to add. I'm teaching a while and have always chosen DEB for the quality of their paper but was going with Examcraft this year as issues were raised with DEB and they weren't addressed. They've lost all support and credibility now.

Treppen

mtoutlemonde wrote: »

I got email yesterday. I think the whole problem lies in the fact that DEB annoyed too many people and orders were cut dramatically. The customer service was appalling to add. I'm teaching a while and have always chosen DEB for the quality of their paper but was going with Examcraft this year as issues were raised with DEB and they weren't addressed. They've lost all support and credibility now.

A victim of their own success.
In fairness their papers were usually decent enough.

Ya too much up in the air now. Just get ready to make your own.... Through kahoot :pac:

mtoutlemonde

Treppen wrote: »

A victim of their own success.
In fairness their papers were usually decent enough.

Ya too much up in the air now. Just get ready to make your own.... Through kahoot :pac:

LIVE!

spurious

Having worked for both, I found DEB much more pleasant to deal with, a small team that stayed the same over the years. I hope this is just a covid thing and not a sign their business is in trouble.