Sun shines on students as right poets turn up

DESPITE the poor forecast, the sun came out in many parts of the country on Saturday morning, almost as if it knew that Leaving Certificate students were back in the exam hall.

But despite the stress of having their timetable changed at such short notice last Wednesday night, candidates at most schools were pleased with the replacement English Paper 2 exams.

Details of the four poets on the original paper – Elizabeth Bishop, John Keats, Michael Longley and Derek Walcott – had appeared in text messages and internet discussion sites after the exam was mistakenly circulated for less than a minute at a Drogheda, Co Louth, school on Wednesday morning.

With minds torn over whether or not to change plans, most of the 60 Leaving Certificate English students at Davis College in Mallow, Co Cork, seem to have stuck to their study focus and were rewarded when three of the same four (Bishop, Keats and Walcott), appeared at the weekend with John Montague slotted into Longley’s place from the original exam. The State Examinations Commission (SEC) had arranged delivery of around 53,000 question sheets to 2,000 exam halls in 800-plus schools and colleges by Friday evening, and said no difficulties had been reported to it about the rescheduled exams.

The Mallow students were almost all very pleased with their performance, after learning about the incident in Louth when text messages started going around at teatime on Wednesday.

“When we heard the rumours, I was hoping they wouldn’t change anything on the second exam. I’d been focusing on Bishop, because she’s the easiest to relate to,” said Katie O’Connell.

“The only thing about all this is that we’re not going to go home now and do as much study as we might have for next week,” she said at lunchtime on Saturday.

Patrick Lucey was also very happy, having prepared for three of the four poets who were examined.

“It was definitely easier than the other paper we had heard about. It’s bad coming in on a Saturday; we’ll just have to keep going with the rest of them now,” he said.

Ordinary level students felt they might have had an advantage because little or no rumours had been circulating about the original paper, meaning they did not have to worry as much about what might or might not appear in the exam.

“It was brilliant, I was very happy with it. Rosita Boland’s poem Naming My Daughter came up and we had done that a few times in class,” said Aoife O’Keeffe.

Many students also welcomed the appearance of the cultural context mode in the higher level comparative study section, which was the same mode reported to have been on the original exam.

Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland subject spokesperson Sheila Parsons said the higher level paper was largely similar to that of which details emerged last week.

“It just shows there is a pattern to how the papers are set by different examiners. The SEC was under huge pressure over all this, but it seems to have worked, and hopefully it has been nothing more than a hiccup for the students,” she said.

A SEC spokesperson said it had received no reports of any difficulties at schools on Saturday, and the only logistical change to their original plans would be organising the returned scripts in time for distribution to examiners.

However, it will not affect the timing of the marking conference this week for examiners who correct the English exams, or the date of the Leaving Certificate results being issued on August 12.