ASTI demands cuts to exam schedule

SECONDARY school teachers have called for changes to the Leaving Certificate timetable to ensure that students do not sit more than five hours of exams in one day.

However they criticised suggestions by Education Minister Mary Hanafin that paper one of the Irish and English exams should be moved to earlier in the final term, to reduce pressure on students.

The minister was booed by delegates when she told them she was examining the feasibility of moving the dates of the examinations.

Earlier, the 500 delegates voted unanimously in favour of a motion urging the

Department of Education to ensure that no exam lasts more than three hours and that the exam period in a single day does not exceed five hours.

Under the current timetable, Leaving Cert students sit for six hours and 10 minutes on the first day of exams and five hours and 50 minutes the next day.

Proposing the motion, Denis Kennedy from Dublin said: "There is a duty on us as educators to minimise the pressure that students are placed under during the crucial days of the Leaving Cert examination."

He said the exams have become an endurance and stamina test, rather than a test of students' knowledge.

Eddie Byrne, a teacher from Dublin said he was concerned for the health of students: "If any colleague came to me and said they had been asked to work for three hours and 20 minutes without a break I would be meeting with school management to point out how unfair this was," he said.

But he said giving more coursework to students to be handed in ahead of time would be just transfer work from pupil to the teacher.