Call to ease pressure on students by staggering exams

AS almost 116,000 students begin the Junior and Leaving Certificate this week, teachers have called for core exams to be staggered to ease pressure on candidates.

The Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) said the maths, English and Irish papers should be distributed throughout the exam period. Students in both Junior and Leaving Certificate face two English papers tomorrow, maths and Irish on Thursday, and most have second Irish papers on Friday. TUI general secretary Jim Dorney suggested adding days to the timetable to relieve students from the cramming of the first few days.

“All three subjects require considerable effort over the course of the opening days. It’s not right that some students are ‘unluckier’ than others by having exams concentrated in a shorter period than classmates,” he said.

Mr Dorney also raised the case of 28 students taking agricultural science and applied maths, which clash on the last day of the Leaving Certificate on June 24.

The State Examinations Commission (SEC) said more popular subjects have to be held early in the schedule, to allow time to collect and mark the scripts. “The inevitable consequence of having to schedule exams in 34 Leaving Certificate subjects in a 13-day period is that a small number of candidates will have to spend an extended period under examination in one day,” a spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) general secretary John White has urged the Government to provide the necessary resources for an overhaul of the Leaving Certificate.