Beginning of the end for exam pupils

Months of slog, study and hard work came to fruition this week as more than 2,700 young people around Clare began their State exams.

Sitting down at exam centres around the county, 648 girls and 630 boys began their Leaving Cert on Wednesday morning while 728 girls and 769 boys started their Junior Cert. Both groups kicked off with English Paper 1.

Speaking to The Clare Champion after the exam, Ennis students expressed their relief at the contents of their first exam paper.

“I found it grand,” said Darragh Glavin (18). “I ran out of time in the mocks but not today,” he added.
Other students, such as Darragh Crowe (17) and Aisling Mangan (18) were similarly pleased as they turned their attention to English Paper 2.

One expert described Paper 1 as “fair but challenging”.

“In line with recent years, students were today expected to engage with the visual as well as the written elements of the comprehensions,” said former St Flannan’s College English teacher and blogger, Evelyn O’Connor.

“I feel this is a positive development as it shows the Leaving Cert is aware of the digital age we now live in. Another very fair aspect of the paper were the highly specific essay questions. In the past, students could prepare a short story and regurgitate it,” she explained.

The students were asked to derive inspiration for a short story from the phrase “an inferior rock band howling for fame”, with the theme of the paper being “memory”.

However, time constraints have always been an issue for students during the English papers, with the Leavingcertenglish.net founder describing the setting of the exam hall as “anything but inspiring”.
There have been calls for the Leaving Cert to be scrapped in favour of continual assessment and the department intends implementing this for the new Junior Cert.

Ms O’Connor agrees that the current format needs tweaking but feels that this alternative needs to be implemented in a fair way.

“Time constraints can stagnate a student’s creativity,” she said. “However, continual assessment is the way forward only if we retain external assessment. Otherwise, teachers could come under severe pressure from parents, neighbours and relatives to inflate grades, particularly in small communities,” she concluded.

For now, however, the high-pressure terminal exam system remains in place.

Meanwhile, an equal number of boys and girls made up the 88 students sitting their Leaving Cert Applied exams this week, a course with a greater emphasis on practical skills and subjects.