Court rejects legal challenge to Leaving Cert Chinese exam – The Irish Times

The Top Court docket has pushed aside a secondary college scholar’s problem to the marking scheme for the Departure Certificates Mandarin Chinese language examination.

Mr Justice Garrett Simons unacceptable claims that the gadget discriminated in opposition to the ones the usage of conventional Mandarin characters over simplified characters.

The coed, who can’t be named for felony causes, claimed examination markers would disagree to just accept written solutions given in conventional Chinese language characters, which might be worn in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

The Taiwanese-born scholar alleged the curriculum required written solutions to be given in simplified Mandarin characters, which might be predominantly worn in Singapore, Malaysia and the Community’s Republic of China.

Suing via his mom, the scholar claimed the requirement to virtue simplified characters discriminated in opposition to the ones from playgrounds the usage of conventional characters. He additionally alleged the Minister for Training unlawfully consulted with the Chinese language Ministry for Training, and that the Chinese language embassy is drawing up the curriculum.

The claims had been denied through the respondents – the Minister for Training, the Nationwide Council for Curriculum and Evaluation, the Atmosphere Examinations Fee, Eire and the Legal professional Normal.

Disregarding the case, the pass judgement on stated the scholar failed to determine the marking scheme is in breach of necessities of the 1998 Training Operate, as were alleged.

The truth that a subset of applicants for a language examination may, because of their heritage, have an preliminary merit over alternative applicants didn’t quantity to discrimination, he dominated.

All applicants could have an equivalent alternative to arrange for the exam and can be assessed objectively through connection with the similar syllabus and staining scheme, he stated.

The pass judgement on was once essential of ways sure linguistic mavens gave their proof to the courtroom. He stated a number of wrongly “assumed the role of advocate and purported to express views on legal issues”, when their position is to serve an purpose impartial opinion on issues inside of their experience.

“Far too frequently, expert witnesses appear to fundamentally misunderstand their role and wrongly regard themselves as advocates for the cause of the party by whom they have been retained.”

Within the provide case, “the extent of evidence led by the applicant, in particular, went far beyond that permitted by the rules in relation to expert evidence”, he stated.

One professional observer said on plenty of events that the phrases of the marking scheme had been discriminatory and exclusionary, he stated.

It was once obvious from the “tendentiousness of her evidence that one of the applicant’s witnesses has very strong political views on the choice of script system”, he stated.

The truth the professional “espouses such strong political views undermines her independence as an expert witness on linguistics, and the court can attach little weight to her evidence”, the pass judgement on stated.