Exam Day arrives for thousands of students
The first exam papers are being taken this morning by most of the 119,000 students sitting the Junior and Leaving certificates.
The younger students face two English exams today, while the Leaving Certificate also opens with English, followed by this afternoon’s Home Economics paper for over 12,000 students.
There are 118,784 students entered for State exams, 111 more than this time last year, including 55,963 scheduled to take the Leaving Certificate.
That is up 1,030 on 2014 but the 2,902 entered for Leaving Certificate Applied is 140 less than a year ago. The number of students which the State Examinations Commission (SEC) is expecting to sit the Junior Certificate is 59,919, down from 60,698 this time last year.
There is another record entry for higher level Leaving Certificate maths, as reported earlier this week, with more than one-third of students in the subject indicating their intention to sit the honours papers.
Although this may drop on Friday morning when the first of two ordinary and higher level maths exams are scheduled, the 18,173 entered at higher level is 900 more than last year, when 14,326 subsequently attempted the tougher papers for which all who pass will get 25 extra college entry points.
In addition, this is the first year in which Junior Certificate maths exams will be based entirely on the Project Maths course that has been introduced on a phased basis since 2011.
Provisional information supplied by schools to the SEC shows that nearly 34,000 entered for Junior Certificate maths — 57% of the total — are entered for higher level, 38% for ordinary level and 5% for foundation level in the subject.
The exams are also being operated under new quality assurance measures added last year, under which written papers have been subjected to scrutiny at an advanced stage of preparation by a subject expert not involved in generating the paper. It is the latest in a series of improvements over recent years, in response to criticisms about high numbers of errors in exams, which were largely attributed to high turnover in experienced examination staff.
SEC chairman Pat Burke said the commission is committed to conducting the exams in a way that is consistent with the high standing they hold internationally and among previous generations.
In addition to almost 100 curricular subjects, students are being examined in 16 non-curricular EU languages, which are the mother tongue of those candidates.
Almost 1,500 people will take those exams on June 17, when other students are timetabled to take Economics or Agricultural Economics papers.
Last year, more than 15,500 students were granted a reasonable accommodation to diminish as far as possible the impact of a physical or learning difficulty on their performance in State exams.
These included waivers relating to spelling or grammar, the assistance of a reader, exemption from a component such as a listening test, or provision of a scribe to write a student’s answers for them.
In the Dáil last week, an increase in the proportion of students who applied for a reader but were refused was criticised by Fianna Fáil TD Sean Fleming.
The exams continue until June 11 for LCA, June 18 for the Junior Certificate and the final Leaving Certificate students complete their exams a day later.
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