Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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88. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if the procurement process was fully compliant with regard to the retaining of services by a company (details supplied) to carry out the leaving certificate predicated grades modelling, compliant but non-competitive, or non-compliant and non-competitive, in either case other than fully compliant; and the justification for this. [30083/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The decision to adopt a model of Calculated Grades by my Department was a result of COVID-19, which prevented the State from running the conventional Leaving Certificate Examinations this year. The system of Calculated Grades is a complex and sophisticated system. It had to be developed from scratch, specifically for the Irish Leaving Certificate, and within an extremely tight timeframe in order for students to get their Calculated Grades results in time.

As part of initial contingency planning for the Leaving Certificate 2020, the State Examinations Commission procured international expertise through Polymetrika International Inc.

Polymetrika was contracted to provide statistical and psychometric expertise, initially on the basis of contingency planning in the event of the Leaving Certificate not taking place as planned.

Polymetrika played an integral part of the development and running of the Calculated Grades model, and as such the contract for Polymetrika was extended to implement the Calculated Grades model under the pre-agreed terms of the contract. This was done following the decision of Government on 8 May 2020 to postpone the Leaving Certificate Examinations.

Due to the time constraints the Department availed of the procurement process known as the Negotiated Procedure without Prior Publication. This is used in circumstances where it is a case of extreme urgency.