Bid to remove 'disability' note on results is rejected

THE High Court yesterday upheld the controversial practice of putting a special note - or annotation - on exam results for students who get special assistance.

Every year about 12,000 Junior and Leaving Cert candidates get assistance in the form of spelling or grammar waivers, a scribe, use of a tape recorder, exemptions from part of the exam, visually modified papers or reading assistance. This is noted on their results, with a few limited exceptions.

Yesterday, a woman lost her High Court claim that she was discriminated against because her Leaving Certificate contained a special note related to her dyslexia - which, she said, labelled her 'disabled'. The note indicated that Kim Cahill had not been assessed on spelling and certain grammatical elements in language subjects.

Unsuccessful

The ruling was the latest round in a long battle that began with an unsuccessful appeal to the Department of Education, followed by an Equality Tribunal ruling that she had been discriminated against and then a Circuit Court reversal of that decision.

Mr Justice Eamon de Valera dismissed Ms Cahill's appeal of the Circuit Court decision in a reserved judgment yesterday.

He accepted the Education Minister Mary Coughlan's argument that the deletion of the notation from Ms Cahill's certificate would constitute a misrepresentation to employers or other persons invited to consider or rely on that document and would also call the integrity of the exam into question.

Failure to record the 'reasonable accommodation' made to Ms Cahill would 'adversely affect the integrity of the testing process' and 'essentially defeat the purpose of the exam in the first place', he said.

The Leaving Certificate occupied 'an important place in the Irish educational system and abroad' and 'must stand for something', he said.

It was a record of the level of achievement of a person at the end of their secondary education and, if a person was not assessed in spelling and grammar elements of subjects, that 'should and must be reflected' in the resulting certificate.

It was also necessary that the reputation of the exam be preserved and the department, in supervising the exam system, acted as 'a guarantor of fairness and equality to all candidates'.

But the equality authority, which had backed the appeal, expressed disappointment at the outcome.

'The Leaving certificate student finds exam time a challenge. The added burden of overcoming dyslexia in written examinations should be viewed as an additional academic achievement rather than a qualified success,' said CEO Renee Dempsey.

The board meets next month when it will consider whether or not to launch a further appeal.

In the meantime, the authority urged Ms Coughlan to review the practices in her department to help to improve the accommodation of people with disabilities.

- John Walshe and Tim Healy

Irish Independent