Fees for mocks

christmas2010

Just curious to know what sort of fees schools are charging for the Mocks.
My daughter had to pay €100 yet her friend who's in a different school didn't have to pay anything.

spurious

Our school charges the students nothing, but I know it cost the school €2000 to get the papers and stationery, for three 3rd yr and three 6th yr classes. We're not sending them out to be corrected, which works out stupidly expensive.

LilMissCiara

We paid €90 for 7 exams. That's to get them corrected, so €100 is about right. Some schools the teachers correct them themselves so the cost of the mocks is only like €10 (for the exam papers). I guess her friend's school covers the costs of the papers etc. themselves and the teachers correct them.

NotExactly

spurious wrote: »

Our school charges the students nothing, but I know it cost the school €2000 to get the papers and stationery.

Ours are €100 and about 100 people are in my year, they are being sent off to be corrected but are we getting ripped off?

deelite

Is there not an exemption if you have a medical card.

Darius.Tr

We paid €85 for mocks and thre's over a 100 of students in our year....

LilMissCiara

deelite wrote: »

Is there not an exemption if you have a medical card.

Nope, that's the actual leaving cert..!

spurious

deelite wrote: »

Is there not an exemption if you have a medical card.

Not for the mocks. Those companies are in the business of making money.
For the actual exams, medical card holders do not have to pay.

spurious

NotExactly wrote: »

Ours are €100 and about 100 people are in my year, they are being sent off to be corrected but are we getting ripped off?

Not particularly in what you're being charged. It's close to what the school is being charged. As to whether you get your money's worth in the standard of paper and correcting, I'm not so sure.

Some of the mock papers are very poor.

One company just lifted a question from their 2010 mock OL paper and put it practically unchanged on the 2011 HL mock paper. Very slack.

Aoifey!

I think it was about 90 or 100 in my school when I did it. I had the medical card but still had to pay for the mocks.

Aoifey!

spurious wrote: »

Not particularly in what you're being charged. It's close to what the school is being charged. As to whether you get your money's worth in the standard of paper and correcting, I'm not so sure.

Some of the mock papers are very poor.

One company just lifted a question from their 2010 mock OL paper and put it practically unchanged on the 2011 HL mock paper. Very slack.

Not to mention how poorly corrected some are. I know the correctors may not be getting paid much but I know last year a lot of ours were very poorly corrected.

rstax

We had to pay 10per student just, and the teachers in the school correct the exams.. The school is paying half the cost for papers and stuff.. There about 170 in leavin cert!

rainbowtrout

Aoifey! wrote: »

I think it was about 90 or 100 in my school when I did it. I had the medical card but still had to pay for the mocks.

The mocks have nothing to do with the State Exams Commission. Schools don't have to run mocks although most choose to do so. Therefore you have to pay for them.

There are lots of variables in the cost of the mocks. Like spurious said, schools have to pay for exam papers and stationary ordered from the mock companies. Some schools just get students to use their own paper which keeps the cost down. Some schools send them away for correction which costs more, some get the teachers to correct them themselves. Some schools get the teachers to set their own mocks so papers cost nothing.

In and around €100 is about normal to pay for exam papers, stationary and get them sent away for correction.

xEmily2011

Aoifey! wrote: »

Not to mention how poorly corrected some are. I know the correctors may not be getting paid much but I know last year a lot of ours were very poorly corrected.

My aunts are all correcting and they get €3 for each paper corrected and it depends how long it takes you like, The one doing maths corrects 6 an hour [JC Ordinary Level] and the one correcting English LC Higher Level is correcting 3 an hour but is getting like €5 a paper for that. They are corrected to a VERY high standard and attempt marks are not given very freely.
I do know that the main reason for the poor correcting is that they have so little time to do it!
The aunt doing maths has 120 students with 2 papers each AND has to have it done in 7 days...so its a LOT of hard work especially as she works as a primary school teacher and has 3 kids :L

GoldFour4

xEmily2011 wrote: »

My aunts are all correcting and they get €3 for each paper corrected and it depends how long it takes you like, The one doing maths corrects 6 an hour [JC Ordinary Level] and the one correcting English LC Higher Level is correcting 3 an hour but is getting like €5 a paper for that. They are corrected to a VERY high standard and attempt marks are not given very freely.
I do know that the main reason for the poor correcting is that they have so little time to do it!
The aunt doing maths has 120 students with 2 papers each AND has to have it done in 7 days...so its a LOT of hard work especially as she works as a primary school teacher and has 3 kids :L

3 leaving cert higher level english in an hour ? I honestly dont know how somebody could correct all that writing to a high standard in 20 mins ?

rainbowtrout

xEmily2011 wrote: »

My aunts are all correcting and they get €3 for each paper corrected and it depends how long it takes you like, The one doing maths corrects 6 an hour [JC Ordinary Level] and the one correcting English LC Higher Level is correcting 3 an hour but is getting like €5 a paper for that. They are corrected to a VERY high standard and attempt marks are not given very freely.
I do know that the main reason for the poor correcting is that they have so little time to do it!
The aunt doing maths has 120 students with 2 papers each AND has to have it done in 7 days...so its a LOT of hard work especially as she works as a primary school teacher and has 3 kids :L

It doesn't matter how long it takes a person to correct. There is a flat fee per paper, whether it takes you 10 minutes or half an hour. Some papers have a higher fee than others (English and Irish have a higher fee than Science etc because there is more work involved in them).

Aoifey has a valid point. I used to correct mocks and I corrected them to the same standard that I correct LC papers for the State Exams Commission. However not all the people that correct for DEB/Examcraft etc correct to that standard, or are qualified teachers or have experience of correcting papers. Therefore some papers are corrected very poorly. I've often had to recorrect my own papers when they have been returned to me.

When I used to correct mocks, I was sent papers from the mock company to be recorrected as another person correcting the same subject as me had done such a poor job on them that the schools had returned them for recorrection and I don't blame them. When they are paying for a service it should be up to standard. I've recorrect mock papers with up to a 40% discrepancy, which is absolutely disgraceful. Mocks are there as a learning exercise for students and a couple of marks either way isn't going to make much of a difference but when students are trying to decide between higher and ordinary level they should at least get accurate feedback on their attempt at a paper.

Time factor (on your aunts part) is no excuse for poor standards of correction. If she has a job and three children to look after and doesn't have the time to correct them properly she shouldn't be correcting them. Also when you ring the mock company to put in an order for corrections every week you tell them how many you are willing to correct. I never took more than I could manage. Your aunt shouldn't take 120 papers if she can't correct them properly in that time.

I had lots of rows with DEB on the phone over the number of papers I would correct. They always tried to throw a few extra bundles into the box every week and every week I would ring them when I got the box and tell them eg 'You sent me 30 more than I said I would correct, those will be returning to you uncorrected this week as I didn't agree to do them'

They always back down and either extend the time into the following week for those papers or I sent them back. On one particular occasion they tried to pull a fast one. On my final week of corrections one year I asked for 100 papers, they said there was only 120 left in the subject and asked would I correct the extra 20, I could have an extra day to send them back. So I agreed. 250 arrived on my doorstep the following day. 100 were corrected and 150 sent back. They rang and begged me to correct them for extra money but there was no way I would put up with that caper from them.

They are a business, if they are running it successfully they should be able to employ enough people to do the job properly for a decent level of pay.

rainbowtrout

malachyscott wrote: »

3 leaving cert higher level english in an hour ? I honestly dont know how somebody could correct all that writing to a high standard in 20 mins ?

I agree. Not a hope of it. Nor should someone be able to get through 6 LC maths papers in an hour either.

Grindylow

Ours were €90 and there being sent off to be corrected, but my Business teacher told me that you don't even have to be a qualified teacher to correct the exams. She said that anyone can just apply to correct them and that they'll more than likely be allowed, so it seems like an awful rip off.

spurious

Noel2k9 wrote: »

Ours were €90 and there being sent off to be corrected, but my Business teacher told me that you don't even have to be a qualified teacher to correct the exams. She said that anyone can just apply to correct them and that they'll more than likely be allowed, so it seems like an awful rip off.

I would agree - and if you look at the amount of cheating hinting that goes on in the mocks thread, they are not even a valid test of what somebody knows.

Most experienced teachers could give a good assessment at this stage of how his/her students will do in the real thing. The only possible argument for mock examinations is to give the students who have not been working a fright and to give time management practice to others. The disruption the mocks cause to schools is not worth it in terms of the outcomes, even before you start talking about missed classes and the expense to schools and/or parents.

Grindylow

spurious wrote: »

I would agree - and if you look at the amount of cheating hinting that goes on in the mocks thread, they are not even a valid test of what somebody knows.

Most experienced teachers could give a good assessment at this stage of how his/her students will do in the real thing. The only possible argument for mock examinations is to give the students who have not been working a fright and to give time management practice to others. The disruption the mocks cause to schools is not worth it in terms of the outcomes, even before you start talking about missed classes and the expense to schools and/or parents.

Exactly. I went into my mocks thinking "Ah sure, it'll be grand" but now that there over I know I need to work on Biology.. a lot.. It's also a confidence booster, I didn't think I'd do as well as I think I may have done. I've no idea when I'll get them back though. Ours were done by Examcraft (I think..) and we had them finished the week before Midterm so does anyone know how long they usually take to come back? 3/4 weeks?

seriouslysweet

In our school we decided to ask the teachers to get someone to correct them, some swapped classes, one woman just got another teacher to do it. Worked out as better money as no tax involved. Also, least we know they're qualified and competant!

rainbowtrout

Noel2k9 wrote: »

Exactly. I went into my mocks thinking "Ah sure, it'll be grand" but now that there over I know I need to work on Biology.. a lot.. It's also a confidence booster, I didn't think I'd do as well as I think I may have done. I've no idea when I'll get them back though. Ours were done by Examcraft (I think..) and we had them finished the week before Midterm so does anyone know how long they usually take to come back? 3/4 weeks?

It depends on the subject, how many correctors the company have and when they were sent in. My school did the mocks the last week of Jan and first week of Feb and then had two weeks of classes before midterm. This was so we would get our mocks back in a reasonable time. All except one or two subjects were back the Friday before midterm which was a good turnaround time. There is a bit of a bottleneck around now as most schools do them just before or just after the midterm.

letsbehonest

We had to pay €105!:mad:

Aoifums

€10 a paper. So €20 for English, Irish and Maths. Each :rolleyes:

PJelly

Ours was like, 90 euro per student. Add on 1.25 if you do geo, 12 euro if you do LCVP, 15 euro if you do Engineering, 20 euro if you do art and 25 if you do music. So depending on your subjects it could get very pricey

apkbarry

mine cost me 30 which i paid for myself... sending our business off to get corrected though... so we will see what happenes