FURTHER checks are to be introduced into the marking of exam scripts by the Irish education ministry following an embarrassing blunder that has only now come to light.

Just before Christmas 218 students who sat the Leaving Certificate last June received unexpected upgrades in their business exam results which had been marked in August.

Ireland was one of the first countries after New Zealand to allow students to see their marked scripts. Students can appeal if they think the scripts were marked unfairly.

During the marking process samples of scripts are sent by examiners to senior colleagues who double check them to ensure consistency of marking in accordance with an agreed scheme. Details of the marking schemes are put on an official website.

However, the system failed to detect that something was seriously amiss with the one examiner’s marking despite attracting an unusually high appeals percentage.

The errors might not have been detected at all were it not for the persistence of a secondary school in Navan which argued that its students’ results were not in accord with their abilities. Eventually the ministry relented and agreed to look again at all the scripts marked by the examiner. Two thirds of them had to be upgraded and 50 of the students were automatically entitled to improved offers of college places. However, the decision came too late for students to change courses this year and already there is talk of legal action against the ministry.

In the meantime the education minister Dr Michael Woods has announced the setting up of a working group to conduct a review of monitoring procedures.