Plans to spend €12m on new marking system for State exams
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The State Examinations Commission is to spend up to €12m on a new online marking system for the Junior and Leaving Certificate exams from 2024.
The exam body has tendered for a company to deliver an online script-marking solution together with a scanning system capable of uploading 75% of scripts to the SEC less than 12 days after an exam takes place.
Online marking is already used to a minor extent for State exams — however, the SEC said that the new system should be planned with a view towards the number of students whose scripts will be marked online increasing by a factor of 6% year-on-year from 2024 onwards.
The company contracted for the new system will be expected to locate its “completely secure” scanning facility near the SEC’s headquarters in Athlone, Co Westmeath.
The commission said that, from now on, the structure of marking schemes for each year’s exams will be set up on the new online system “substantially earlier” than is currently the case.
That will likely see that setup, which sees the system primed as to how each question is to be marked specifically, take place in January or February of each year, rather than the current norm of late April or early May.