Leaving Cert Chemistry students receive upgrade following decision to allow an alternative answer

Eighteen students who sat Chemistry in this year’s Leaving Certificate  today received the unexpected news of a results upgrade from the State Examinations Commission after a student queried that there was an alternative answer for a question on the exam paper.

The students, who did not query their results, have benefited from a revision to the marks awarded for the paper, carried out by the SEC on foot of an appeal by one candidate, RTE.ie is reporting.

This year's appeal process had led to around 1,500 upgrades, which is in line with last year's outcome while more than 5,000 students appealed the results they received in a total of 9,087 papers this year and 16% were upgraded.

It is understood that results were downgraded in the case of five appeals.

In one appeal, a student queried the marks awarded for an answer in the Chemistry paper.The student argued there was another alternative correct answer to part of question 5 (a), which asked students to define the "relative atomic mass of an element", and the SEC accepted this.

The answer was worth just three marks out of a total of 400.

As a result, the SEC reviewed an additional 208 Chemistry papers where the awarding of those three marks would lead to a higher grade and 18 of those papers were upgraded as a result and the students were notified of this today.

Meanwhile, the marking process for State Examinations has come under scrutiny following a recent High Court appeal by Leaving Certificate student Rebecca Carter.

Ms Carter discovered during a recheck of her Business paper that her marks had been totted up incorrectly to her disadvantage, and The High Court ruled in her favour stating that Ms Carter should not have to wait until the normal appeals process is concluded in October to receive the formal outcome of her appeal and miss a UCD deadline for acceptance of a place on their Veterinary Medicine course as a result.