There was “no time” to run a full procurement on the company which built the Leaving Cert predicted grading system, the education minister has confirmed.
It emerged on Wednesday that two errors, affecting 7,200 grades, had been discovered within the predicted grading system. Norma Foley said that a report had indicated that Canadian company Polymetrika International had made a mistake in one line of code out of 50,000, causing around 6,500 students receiving one result at least one grade lower than they should have received.
Ms Foley said that the system was meant to draw on the core subjects of Irish, English, and Maths, and combine them with students’ two best non-core subjects. The coding error instead combined them with the students’ two weakest non-core subjects.
Ms Foley said those students will have their grades restored. Students will be told by text message if they have been affected. Those students, possibly as many as 6,500, who received higher grades will be unaffected, the Minister said.
Sinn Féin’s Donnchadh O’Laoghaire asked Ms Foley how Polymetrika had come to be chosen to run the system, with the Minister saying that there “was not time to run a normal tender process”. She said that it was done under due to time constraints.
She said: “It is my understanding that before any decision was taken to postpone the state exams, Polymetrika had been engaged by the State Examinations Commission to advise on calculated grades, this was part of the SEC contingency plan.”
Ms Foley said that this process had to be finished before early September, meaning that a normal procurement process was not possible. Instead, the department used a negotiated procedure without prior publication which is allowed in cases of urgency by the Office of Government Procurement.
Ms Foley also confirmed that Polymetrika had been paid €160,000 for the contract, some €91,500 above the initially agreed cost.
Labour’s Aodhán Ó Riordáin criticised the Government for not “road-testing” the system and said that the Minister had made a “remarkable statement” that students will miss out on legitimately obtained college places because of the errors.
“We told you that this timeline was wrong because it was too late to appeal. What is the department going to do about students who have made a four-year decision but because of your department’s foul-up, their lives will be different?
“It’s not good enough to say that mistakes happen. It’s like making a mistake with the foundations of the house but saying ‘sure 95% of the house is grand’.”
Social Democrat TD Gary Gannon said that he had only found one member of Polymetrika staff on LinkedIn and asked the Minister to clarify the size of the company. Ms Foley said that the company were experts in “high-stakes fields”.
Ms Foley said that a full review of the system would be undertaken in due course, with full details being released as soon as it is finished.
She said that any student who is given a higher offer due to the error or because they get better grades in November’s exams will not have to pay fees.
