Displaying 1421-1430 of 2671 results.
Mobile laptops
Created : 07 Oct 2020, 4:05 PM
Archived : 07 Dec 2020, 12:00 AM
Our students are making great use of our 2 sets of C.0.W.S mobile laptops in classes. They are proving to be a great I. T. learning resource
October is Dyslexia awareness month.
Created : 06 Oct 2020, 8:26 PM
Archived : 06 Dec 2020, 12:00 AM
October is Dyslexia awareness month. Attached please find a document with details on activities that can take place this month and website details to find further information and on dyslexia

Pdf-1
Student Wellbeing Survey
Created : 06 Oct 2020, 10:23 AM
Archived : 06 Dec 2020, 12:00 AM
During first class tomorrow morning, we are asking all our students to fill out a ‘Back to School Wellbeing Survey’. Students will need an electronic device to complete this. The aim of the survey is assess how students have found their return to school and how as a school we can support them in the coming months.
Minister’s Statement. - update re LC Results
Created : 04 Oct 2020, 1:39 PM
Archived : 04 Dec 2020, 12:00 AM
Statement from the Minister for Education Norma Foley TD and the Department of Education and Skills regarding Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades Process Saturday 3 October 2020 The Minister for Education Norma Foley TD has updated Leaving Certificate 2020 students on matters relating to the corrected, higher Calculated Grades which are to issue to some students. The Department of Education and Skills will re-open the student Calculated Grades portal at 6pm today, Saturday 3 October, and all students who are due to receive corrected, higher grades, will be able to access their results. When the portal is reopening students will receive a text message to say whether their grade is changing to a higher grade or not. The Department will e-mail students whose grades have been corrected. Students who receive improved marks will also be able to see these new marks in the portal. • 5,408 students will receive a higher grade, by one grade band, in one subject. • 621 students will receive a higher grade, by one grade band, in two subjects. • 71 students will receive a higher grade, by one grade band, in three or more subjects. 6,870 grades in total will increase affecting 6,100 students. 614 schools and other centres recognised to hold the Leaving Certificate will have one or more upgraded results. This is out of a total of 741 schools and centres. It is important to note that no student will receive a lower grade as a result of this process. Following the finding of errors in the code used by the Calculated Grades national standardisation process, the Minister for Education commissioned Education Testing Services (ETS) to provide an independent expert opinion on the coding. The ETS statement is now published here: ETS raised two issues in their statement. The first is an error which occurred in the use of data, where a student did not sit all three core subjects at Junior Cycle. s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/govieassets/89698/73e7a5b6- faaa-4bf7-a5e0-cf5f0d461ed1.pdf In those cases, the system was meant to use the average national Junior Cycle score, in the missing subject, of the group of students who took their Leaving Certificate in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Instead, it chose that student’s next best subject for inclusion in the group computation. The second issue raised by ETS is how the algorithm treated students’ marks at the extreme ends of the scale. ETS noted that the treatment does not exactly match what is described in the national standardisation group’s report, and confirmed that this does not have any meaningful impact on results. Speaking directly to students, Minister Foley said: This issue relates to those students whose marks are 99 per cent and above, and those whose marks are one per cent and below. The ETS statement says that a student could not have received a lower grade as a result of this issue. “Last week I expressed my regret to students for what had happened. I want to reiterate that today. “You have had an exceptionally difficult year. I’m sorry for that. And I’m sorry this last week delivered more uncertainty to you. “When we found errors in the code, I decided to seek independent expert oversight in the interest of certainty, particularly for students. “I am glad that we can now provide students whose grades were lower than they should have been with their corrected results today and that this period of uncertainty is now over for all students. “I wish you all every success in your choices and your journeys.” The full set of student data has been re-run in the corrected model. The Department’s Calculated Grades Executive Office and the Educational Research Centre have each run data checks independently of each other. The results that will now be published on the calculated grades student portal are the correct results under the model. A corrected file of results has been provided to the CAO earlier this afternoon. The CAO will now establish how many students are eligible to receive a new CAO offer. The Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science will work with the CAO and the higher education institutions to see how these students can be facilitated to commence the course that they would, in other circumstances, have been offered in an earlier round. Any student who has applied to a higher education institution outside the State who believes their grade change will impact those arrangements should contact the relevant higher education institution in the first instance. The Department’s helpline on 01 8892199 and will be open today until 7pm and tomorrow from 11am-4 pm. The email address is LC2020@education.gov.ie . The National Parents Council Helpline will re-open on Monday at 11 am. Full details of these arrangements are on gov.ie/leavingcertificate. ENDS Notes to editors A decision was taken on 10 April to postpone the Leaving Certificate Examinations until July, which was followed by a further announcement on 8 May to move to Calculated Grades. Online registration for Calculated Grades opened on 26 May. The Leaving Certificate results were issued on 7 September. On 30 September, Minister for Education Norma Foley announced that two errors had been found in the coding used in the Calculated Grades process. The model was designed to take the Junior Cycle results of a group of students and use that group’s results to inform the calculation of their Leaving Certificate Results. It bears re- stating; the system did not take the results of a single student’s Junior Cycle exams and apply it to that specific student’s Leaving Certificate. Rather, the system looked at performance at an aggregate class level in the Junior Cycle examinations, and applied that in calculating students’ Leaving Certificate Results. The model was intended to use the students’ scores in Irish, English, Maths and their two strongest subjects. As you know, the error we discovered meant that the coding drew in the students’ two weakest subjects rather than two strongest scores. A second error concerned the inclusion of Civil Social and Political Education (CSPE), when it should have been disregarded by the system. Following this, the Minister commissioned Education Testing Services (ETS) to provide an independent expert opinion on the coding. This statement has now been published and students are being issued with their corrected grades via the calculated grades student portal at gov.ie/LeavingCertificate. It was announced on 26 August that the postponed examinations will commence on 16 November. Registration for these examinations is open until Wednesday 7 October.
Happy St Francis Day
Created : 02 Oct 2020, 1:23 PM
Archived : 04 Dec 2020, 12:00 AM
Happy St Francis Day to everyone from Caroline. St Francis is the patron saint of animals and the environment. Be kind to all God’s creatures.
Minister For Education and Skills statement re Calculated Grades error
Created : 30 Sep 2020, 5:39 PM
Archived : 30 Nov 2020, 12:00 AM
30 September, 2020 – Statement from the Minister for Education Norma Foley TD and the Department of Education and Skills regarding Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades Process The Department of Education and Skills has found two errors in the Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades process which mean that incorrect grades were issued to some students when they received their results on 7 September. The errors are being rectified and the process is being re-checked with a series of independent checks now underway. The Department’s checks have indicated that this will impact on some of the Calculated Grades results that have already issued and some students will be receiving a higher Calculated Grade in one or more subjects than the grades they received on 7 September. The precise number of students who will receive higher grades will not be available until the process is completed, but it is likely to be in the region of 6,500. No student will receive a reduced grade in any subject as a result of this process. The checks also indicate that the majority of the students who will be receiving an improved grade will receive an upgrade in one subject only, with a smaller number of students receiving an upgrade in more than one subject. The Department of Education and Skills will contact students who will be receiving the improved grades as soon as all the checks are completed. When the revised grades are issued the CAO and the Higher Education Institutions will establish which students receiving corrected results would have been eligible for a higher preference offer in previous rounds of the CAO process. The Department of Further and Higher Education, Research Innovation and Skills will work with the CAO and the Higher Education Institutions to determine how those students who receive upgraded results can be facilitated to commence the course that they would, otherwise have been offered in an earlier CAO round. Minister Foley said: “I want to say how sorry I am that this has happened. “My immediate priority is to fix the errors and their consequences so that students get their correct grades. “That is happening right now and the next steps will follow quickly. “On my instruction, the Department of Education and Skills has commissioned independent international experts to examine aspects of the Calculated Grades System to provide further reassurances to me and to students. “I will provide full detail on the errors, how they are being addressed and the grade upgrades as soon as I can.” Information on what has happened: Two errors have been discovered in the same part of the coding used to implement the standardisation process. The first error was in a single line of code programmed by the Department’s external contractor Polymetrika International Inc. The error affected the way in which candidates’ Junior Cycle results were included in the standardisation process. It was intended that the students’ aggregate class level Junior Cycle results in Irish, English and Maths would be included in the data used by the national standardisation process, together with their best two other subjects. The error had the effect that the students’ results in Irish, English and Maths were put together with their weakest two other subjects in the standardisation process. The effect of this error has been that, in some subjects, some candidates received Calculated Grades that were lower than they should have been and some received grades that were higher. Polymetrika discovered the error and informed the Department about it immediately. They have since corrected the piece of code. The Department of Education and Skills found the second error while performing checks related to rectifying the first error. This error was contained in the same section of the code programmed by the Department’s external contractor Polymetrika. The second error, which also related to the way in which candidates’ Junior Cycle results were included in the national standardisation process, was that the results of the Junior Cycle subject Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE) were included in the data being used by the model. The Department of Education and Skills’ checks found that the subject’s results had been included in error. It was incorrect, as in line with the design of the Calculated Grades process, this subject should not have been included in the data used by the model. How these are being addressed: The coding errors have been corrected. The Department has carried out a series of further checks and has identified no further errors in the coding. It has checked that the coding correctly implements all decisions of the National Standardisation Group about how data were to be combined and used in the standardisation process. As a further reassurance, the Department has contracted ETS Educational Testing Service, the world-leading US-based non-profit organisation which specialises in educational measurement, to review essential aspects of the coding. The results data have now been re-run through the corrected model. The review of relevant aspects of the code by ETS is expected to take a number of days. Once this is completed, the Department will have full information on which students will benefit from the improved grades and the specific subjects involved for each student. The Department will then contact all students, advising whether they will receive a higher grade or grades, or that they are not impacted. The Department will send a corrected file of student results to the CAO so that the CAO can work with higher education institutions to determine if a student is due a new offer and to do everything possible to facilitate their admission. Any student who would have been entitled to a different offer in previous CAO rounds if they received the correct grade on 7 September will receive this offer or a deferred offer as soon as practicable after the updating of results. This is in line with the practice that occurs in the appeals process every year. When the results are published on the portal detailed information on this process will be available for students on gov.ie/LeavingCertificate. The Department of Education and Skills has put in place a dedicated helpline and email address to answer queries from students. The helpline number is 01 8892199 and the email address is LC2020@education.gov.ie . The helpline will be open today from 4-7pm and tomorrow from 10am-5pm. ENDS
Calculated Grades error — letter from DES
Created : 30 Sep 2020, 5:36 PM
Archived : 30 Nov 2020, 12:00 AM
Dear Principal, This is to advise you that the Minister for Education and Skills today issued a statement relating to the Leaving Certificate 2020 Calculated Grades Process. A copy of this statement can be found here. The statement relates to two errors that the Department has found in the Calculated Grades process. These errors led to incorrect grades having been issued to some students when they received their results on 7 September. The errors are being rectified and the process is being re-checked, including a series of independent checks, by US-based organisation Educational Testing Service (ETS), which specialises in educational measurement, which is also now in train. It is expected that this process will be completed over the coming days, at which time contact will be made by the Department with students. It will not be possible to identify the affected students unless this process has been completed. The Department’s checks have indicated that this will mean that some students will be receiving a higher Calculated Grade in one or more subjects than the grades they received on 7 September. The precise number of students who will receive higher grades will not be available until the process is completed, but it is likely to be in the region of 6,500, or just over 10 per cent of the 61,000 who received their results. The number of grades involved will equate to approximately two per cent of the grades issued. The majority of students affected will receive an upgrade in one subject only. No student will receive a reduced grade in any subject as a result of this process. This matter is deeply regretted by the Minister and the Department and they apologise sincerely to each student impacted for these errors, and the upset and distress they have caused. The Department has put in place a helpline for students which is now open and will be operated up to Sunday 04 October. The helpline number is 01 8892199. Updated information has also being posted at www.gov.ie/leavingcertificate. An email address for queries is also available at LC2020@education.gov.ie Yours sincerely, Curriculum and Assessment Policy Unit, Department of Education and Skills.
Green Flag raised
Created : 27 Sep 2020, 7:09 PM
Archived : 27 Nov 2020, 12:00 AM
Congratulations to all on our Green School Committee who had the honour of raising our first Green Flag for BCS on Friday. Well done to all involved on their tremendous work throughout school which culminated with the awarding of the flag in April.
Transition Year
Created : 25 Sep 2020, 11:13 AM
Archived : 25 Nov 2020, 12:00 AM
Our group are out on the hike as part of their Gaisce Award
Blackwater Community School News
Created : 23 Sep 2020, 6:54 PM
Archived : 23 Nov 2020, 12:00 AM
Image is Fiona Kenny, Ballyduff celebrating her great achievement in this year’s Leaving Cert Welcome Back As our new school year continues at BCS we wish to thank you for your continued adherence to COVID 19 protocols and do continue to keep up the effort at all times throughout the school. As the national picture demonstrates now is not the time to become complacent so continue your co-operation and support by reinforcing your practices and adhere to the HSE guidelines. Success Well done to all staff and students who took part in county finals at adult and under age level in hurling, camogie and Ladies Football over the last few weeks. Congratulations to all the victors. Leaving Cert Success Congratulations to all Leaving Cert students who received their results recently and are now embarking on the next step of their career journey. Wishing you all success in what lies ahead for you. Congratulations to Fiona Kenny of Ballyduff on achieving 8 A1’s in her Leaving Certificate at Blackwater Community School, Lismore. Fiona also got full marks in Junior Certificate three years ago and intends to study Physiotherapy in U.L. from September. School App Reminder to all to keep up to date with practices and activities in BCS by using our School App and school Facebook.