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.