LEAVING Cert student craft work had been mislaid on several occasions before now the Department of Education confirmed yesterday.
One school told The Irish Times it was contacted twice before 1995 by the exams branch of the Department to say pieces of Leaving Cert student craftwork had been mislaid.
"Only a small number of students were involved and they asked us to assess them on the basis of their classroom work and fax a grade to the Department," the school's art teacher said.
Another school reported that, after such an episode, it now personally delivered students' craftwork to the exams branch in Athlone.
"Yes, on occasion in the past small numbers of craftwork have gone astray," a Department spokesman confirmed to The Irish Times. "But on these occasions the checking system within the Department has always picked up the mistake in such circumstances the school would be contacted to provide an assessment."
Only small numbers would have been affected, the spokesman stressed. "The pieces of craftwork come through the post and sometimes they are only delayed."
Meanwhile, the Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, said yesterday that "certainly the system failed" in the recent mistake concerning the Leaving Cert art results of 49 students.
The appeals system in the Department should have shown up the discrepancy, the Minister said on the RTE Liveline programme yesterday.
"I don't know where the error happened," Ms Breathnach said "it should have shown up at the recheck stage . . . but human error can happen.
The Minister added that she was committed to implementing the recommendations of the Price Waterhouse report which she has commissioned on the marking of Leaving Certificate art in 1995.
"The report is expected in the next few weeks and I am committed to publishing it in full. I have asked Price Waterhouse to make recommendations on how the appeals system might be improved for all Leaving Cert subjects and I am committed to implementing whatever these recommendations are. It is essential that people have absolute confidence in the national examination system and that is why I have committed myself to putting the full report in the public domain.
When they found out where the system had failed, the public would be informed, the Minister said. There were four points at which the discrepancy over the 49 students' missing craftwork should have shown up, the Minister said. "It should have become evident under these provisions that some part of the students' work was missing, it should have shown up..." The task was to find out where these four safeguards had failed.
The Department would be doing everything possible to "measure up the effects on each individual student affected", Ms Breathnach said.
Department officials would examine each student's case to ascertain how their life choices might have been affected by their incorrect Leaving Certificate art results.
The president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, Mr Tony Deffely, said: "This whole debacle makes one wonder if it's really necessary to shift all this material around the country on trains to warehouses and if some mechanism could not be put in place to assess it locally."