Students to get full marks for cancelled Leaving and Junior Cert oral and practical tests

The 2020 Leaving Cert and Junior Cert oral and practical examinations have been cancelled on foot of the Covid-19 outbreak, the Minister for Education has said.

The tests had been due to take place between next Monday, March 23, and April 3, with the decision to cancel set to affect 126,000 students at both grades.

Joe McHugh said that all students who had been due to take those tests would be awarded full marks for that portion of the exam.

The decision was taken in light of the closure of schools as a result of the virus last Thursday.

“Because of school closures it would not be possible to hold these exams next week, nor will it be possible to reschedule them,” the Minister said, adding that as a result of the decision “no student will score less than they would have if schools had been open and operating as normal”.

At present, no change has been made to the scheduling of the written exams proper which ordinarily take place in June.

Reacting to the news director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals Clive Byrne said the announcement “will come as a relief to students”.

“The resilience shown by students, particularly those sitting exams this year, has been commendable in recent weeks,” Mr Byrne said. He urged students to continue working towards their written exams in June and to complete the work assigned remotely by their teachers.

Separately, the deadlines for project work and coursework in certain subjects - originally set for dates between March 20 and April 24 - has been extended until May 15th.

The cancelled exams include oral tests in Leaving Cert Irish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Japanese.

Practical performance tests in Leaving Cert music have been cancelled also, together with practical performance tests in Junior Cert music and home economics.

The upshot from the decision means that students are guaranteed a minimum score in the affected subjects - with a maximum of 50% in ordinary and higher level music possible, and 40% in both levels of Irish guaranteed.

This could lead to issues with the college application process, and with students opting to move from ordinary level to higher level, or vice versa, at the last minute. The Minister would not be drawn on how those issues would be dealt with, save for saying that a group has been set up to deal with “all these sorts of questions”.

“This is a difficult time for all,” Mr McHugh said. “Students are facing a challenging period out of school and our decision on this element of the exams is being taken with their best interests at heart.”

Mr McHugh said the cancellations are the “fairest response”, despite the seeming inequity of their impact.

“This was a difficult decision but at the heart of it was fairness. We had to make a decision,” he said.

At present, the Government is working on the assumption that the written exams will proceed as planned in June, Mr McHugh said, but added that they are dealing only with hypotheticals as things stand.

“In an ideal world the virus would peak towards the end of April,” the minister said.

Meanwhile, University College Cork is set to carry out its own end of semester exams via online assessment using a previously-issued timetable.

Course coordinators will contact students to explain the format, with assessments due to be held via the Canvas online learning platform, Professor John O’Halloran, UCC’s registrar, said in an email update.

- Additional reporting Eoin English