LC Results pushed forward

richardh330

Anyone else see the article on irish times website? I won't bother explain it here, read it for yourself: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/call-for-earlier-leaving-certificate-results-1.1849594

Is this legit? Personally I doubt the date will change.

6thyearlife

I hope they do !!! dying to know

Noccy_Mondy

Can't see it happening to be honest. They will be out Wednesday week. Was always mid August, don't think they will change it at all. Maybe I might be wrong though. If I remember rightly time is tight as it is, the exams aren't all corrected until the end of July, and then the results have to be gathered for each person.

spurious

It's a very tight schedule as it is. Any further tightening will cause more errors as correctors rush to make deadlines.
They don't even look at the JC stuff in Athlone until the LC results are out. All the staff work on the LC results to make the issue date.
Any calls for shortening the process must be coming from people who have no idea how the process actually works.

rainbowtrout

Slow news day.

The time frame from students sitting exams to the release of the results is tight enough as it is.

The bones of the article says that students don't have enough time to find accommodation. All students are in the same boat. Everyone gets their results the same day. The CAO offers come out the same day.

For those that have more than enough points for their first choice course they should be heading off the day after the results come out to look for accommodation.


If anything it's the colleges that have room to manoeuvre. When I started college, it was close to the end of September, going into October, now the college year starts a few weeks earlier which is why there is pressure to get organised.

randylonghorn

rainbowtrout wrote: »

If anything it's the colleges that have room to manoeuvre. When I started college, it was close to the end of September, going into October, now the college year starts a few weeks earlier which is why there is pressure to get organised.

That's because most colleges now have moved to the semester system (apart from Trinity), and two exam periods per year puts pressure to get started earlier. In addition, although some colleges do the exams after Christmas, that's not a popular option with students (for good reason I think), and the pressure generally is on those colleges to move to pre-Christmas exams.

I know Limerick was one of the first to move to semester system ... but I also remember the curses of my own peers who were in UL about how pressurised their timetable was, I don't really know whether it has improved since.

The problem isn't really the dates tbh, the underlying problem is a lack of sufficient student accommodation, a couple of extra days will make very little difference.

Releasing some exchequer funding for additional on-campus accom, or even for buying / renovating existing nearby unused buildings in places like Dublin, would be a much more constructive (:pac:) step, as well as being a shot in the arm for employment in the construction sector.

And unusually for public funding for education, that kind of funding actually pays back over the years, perhaps not directly to the state, but in income to the colleges which in turn means that there's less of a shortfall for the state to meet.

rainbowtrout

UL were already in the semester system when I started there, it might have only been the first year of it, definitely no more than two. We did Christmas exams in January. I understand they have moved to before Christmas now. To be honest it was fine for the most part.

Shaunh3374

I agree with the other posts that the time for the correcting and gathering of the results is already tight enough. Simply trying to shorten it wouldn't be realistic.

However, what I don't agree on is the long wait from receiving your results to actually getting your college offers. It is currently 5 days of a wait. I am not sure if this was always the case, but I think that in the era of technology and computers that this can be don't a lot quicker. Does anyone know if this process is done by hand or by computers? Also what are yer views on this long wait for students ?

thelad95

Rubbish article to be honest. Accommodation is in short supply regardless of the timeframe to get it sorted. As for the wait for offers, I'd imagine that's to let colleges know what students are likely to be coming etc. Last year, I got offered a course in Maynooth and received an information pack in the post the same day.

rainbowtrout

thelad95 wrote: »

Rubbish article to be honest. Accommodation is in short supply regardless of the timeframe to get it sorted. As for the wait for offers, I'd imagine that's to let colleges know what students are likely to be coming etc. Last year, I got offered a course in Maynooth and received an information pack in the post the same day.

Same happened me when I got my offer for UL I got their welcome pack the same day. I knew what my offer was before I opened it due to UL being plastered all over the other envelope. And that was in the days before online application and acceptance!

I'd say the colleges get a provisional list of everyone who has applied for their courses so they can draw up a provisional list of students and have it ready to go and then all they have to do is delete students that don't get the points/don't accept the place.

MegGustaa

Shaunh3374 wrote: »

I agree with the other posts that the time for the correcting and gathering of the results is already tight enough. Simply trying to shorten it wouldn't be realistic.

However, what I don't agree on is the long wait from receiving your results to actually getting your college offers. It is currently 5 days of a wait. I am not sure if this was always the case, but I think that in the era of technology and computers that this can be don't a lot quicker. Does anyone know if this process is done by hand or by computers? Also what are yer views on this long wait for students ?

Well, the CAO people don't sit around twiddling their thumbs for those 5 days. It's all computerised, yes, and has been for a long time. But that doesn't mean they can just issue offers straight away. For those interim days they run simulations of the rounds of offers, based on LC results and estimations of how many will accept/decline first offers etc., with representatives from each third level institution involved (remember it's a centralised process so offers made by Trinity affect UCD's intake etc.). They essentially do a "dry-run", running different scenarios. They can't do computer simulations until the LC results are released to the CAO, because they need real data to work with. I'm no expert on exactly how it works but I know it's complicated and I'm happier to let them take a few days to ensure everything runs smoothly.

I'd prefer a system like UCAS where provisional offers are made before the final A-Level exams, on specific conditions. Students designate one offer as "firm" and another as their back-up, so universities have some indication of how many students they can expect to be admitting. A-Level results come out the day after LC results, but they know that day if they have their university place because they've either fulfilled the requirements or they haven't. Of course, the way the LC is set-up our students wouldn't have any recent grades upon which to base a provisional offer, but going forward I hope we end up with a system somewhat along those lines.

linguist

What I know is that no time is lost between sitting the exams, getting the marking underway and getting that work completed. The guide given to each candidate and examinations.ie give an outline of the marking process and I know from having done it that there is no time wasted.

Although you only ever really know about the little corner of the process you are directly involved in, it's probably fair to say that the LC marking process has been completed since about 25th July. (I'm basing that on the sequencing in my own subject). My understanding is that the marks are processed very efficiently in Athlone - they literally have staff standing by to input each subject on its due date. Thus, I imagine that at this moment in time, they're probably printing!!

Therefore, it is possible that if they moved over to fully online result issuing, maybe they could accelerate the process. There would be some opposition from schools I'd imagine. Again though, since there are multiple checks and control points in the marking process, I imagine the same applies to the processing of the results. I don't think they'd hit print and go off for the bank holiday weekend. I'd imagine it's closely supervised. Apparently the results have to come out the day before the UK A levels in order to be processed by UCAS.

Raspberry Fileds

linguist wrote: »

What I know is that no time is lost between sitting the exams, getting the marking underway and getting that work completed.

I don't know how you can say that. Even if it gets to infeasible levels, there are surely always ways of making a process more efficient. Afaik, nothing happens to scripts until all exams have been completed - already, then, there is room for improvement.

rainbowtrout

Raspberry Fileds wrote: »

I don't know how you can say that. Even if it gets to infeasible levels, there are surely always ways of making a process more efficient. Afaik, nothing happens to scripts until all exams have been completed - already, then, there is room for improvement.

How do you know?

thelad95

Raspberry Fileds wrote: »

I don't know how you can say that. Even if it gets to infeasible levels, there are surely always ways of making a process more efficient. Afaik, nothing happens to scripts until all exams have been completed - already, then, there is room for improvement.

What exactly are you suggesting? From what I can see, you want people sitting correcting and printing results 24/7 so as to make things slightly more convenient for you. The world doesn't revolve around us, the Leaving Cert isn't as important as you think, neither is finding accommodation. Everyone is flat out as it is. To have the whole process completed in 7/8 weeks is pretty admirable as it is.

That article from the Irish Times is garbage anyway. The amount of sh*te they write about the LC exams is scandalous. Tabloid-like drudgery.

linguist

Raspberry Fields: I'm actually not entirely sure what you mean by that. But if you're suggesting that the entire marking process doesn't start until the last paper has been sat, then I can assure you that you're totally wrong. It's a rolling process with subjects basically being marked in the order they're sat.

Unfortunately, I can't give you chapter and verse about exactly what happens from the moment the scripts arrive in Athlone to the moment the individual marker gets hold of them. Firstly, because there are probably things I don't know and secondly because some of that goes beyond what is publicly available and thus I can't discuss it.

However, the key thing is this, the whole process constantly moves forward with strict deadlines so that as soon as the staff in Athlone have processed one set of marks, there is another arriving in the post ready to be done. Thus, if there is scope for improvement, it might be at this point of the process now which, I presume (because I don't know for sure!) is printing. If it all went online, you'd imagine it could possibly be expedited.

Raspberry Fileds

linguist wrote: »

Raspberry Fields: I'm actually not entirely sure what you mean by that. But if you're suggesting that the entire marking process doesn't start until the last paper has been sat, then I can assure you that you're totally wrong. It's a rolling process with subjects basically being marked in the order they're sat.

Unfortunately, I can't give you chapter and verse about exactly what happens from the moment the scripts arrive in Athlone to the moment the individual marker gets hold of them. Firstly, because there are probably things I don't know and secondly because some of that goes beyond what is publicly available and thus I can't discuss it.

However, the key thing is this, the whole process constantly moves forward with strict deadlines so that as soon as the staff in Athlone have processed one set of marks, there is another arriving in the post ready to be done. Thus, if there is scope for improvement, it might be at this point of the process now which, I presume (because I don't know for sure!) is printing. If it all went online, you'd imagine it could possibly be expedited.

Thanks for response. I'm probably wrong in thinking that papers lie untouched until the last exam has been sat. I presume you would agree, though, that the SEC and CAO should be regularly reviewing and trying to improve their system.

thelad95

Raspberry Fileds wrote: »

Thanks for response. I'm probably wrong in thinking that papers lie untouched until the last exam has been sat. I presume you would agree, though, that the SEC and CAO should be regularly reviewing and trying to improve their system.

Are you high? Given the amount of information and applicants both deal with, they both run incredibly efficiently. In total, the SEC will have corrected around 1 million exam papers across LC and JC, send out 100000 printed results sheets and have next years papers ready to go nearly a year before the 2015 exams will be sat. All this across one summer. How much more efficient do you want them to be?

rainbowtrout

thelad95 wrote: »

What exactly are you suggesting? From what I can see, you want people sitting correcting and printing results 24/7 so as to make things slightly more convenient for you. The world doesn't revolve around us, the Leaving Cert isn't as important as you think, neither is finding accommodation. Everyone is flat out as it is. To have the whole process completed in 7/8 weeks is pretty admirable as it is.

That article from the Irish Times is garbage anyway. The amount of sh*te they write about the LC exams is scandalous. Tabloid-like drudgery.

They have nothing else to write about all summer, so it fills a few pages. What other country devotes almost 3 weeks coverage to state examinations in June and another week or two in August with results and offers coming out?

Raspberry Fileds wrote: »

Thanks for response. I'm probably wrong in thinking that papers lie untouched until the last exam has been sat. I presume you would agree, though, that the SEC and CAO should be regularly reviewing and trying to improve their system.

And what makes you think they don't review and try to improve every year???

And yes, you're entirely wrong, the papers don't sit and lie untouched until the end of June.

Say what you like about the public service, but the SEC is probably one of the most efficient sections there is.

Have a read of the Superintendent and Correctors thread if you want confirmation of what goes on in June.