The mocks have been and gone, the copious books have been revised and now the wait is almost over for 121,500 pupils as this year’s Junior and Leaving Certificate exams start tomorrow.
The first exams in both the Junior and Leaving Cert are the higher and ordinary English papers, at 9.30am tomorrow. This year’s quota of pupils has been the highest number to sit the exams this decade, due to an increase at the Junior Cert level — up almost 1,400 to more than 62,000. There has been a small decrease in numbers sitting the Leaving Cert to 56,580.
Over the bank holiday weekend, more than four million exam papers were distributed from the headquarters of the State Examinations Commission in Athlone to about 5,000 examination centres around the country.
Slightly more boys than girls are due to sit both sets of exams. Exams are set in a total of 90 subjects. Pupils are also allowed to sit papers in 16 non-curricular foreign languages such as Dutch or Romanian. More than 16,700 pupils with special needs or learning disabilities are being supported by the commission’s “reasonable accommodation” scheme. They can be helped by readers and sign language interpreters, word processors, enlarged scripts, braille versions and have spelling, grammar and punctuation waived from assessment in language subjects.
Pat Burke, chairman of the commission, said that the scheme allowed pupils to demonstrate what they know without compromising the exams’ integrity. “This involves them being held to the same standard as other candidates with regard to what the examination is intended to measure,” he said.
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The commission has issued an urgent appeal for more teachers to mark papers in both sets of exams.
More than 6,800 examiners are required to mark more than one million individual grades. Teachers’ unions have claimed that the difficulty in recruiting examiners is due to pay cuts in the sector introduced during the economic crisis.
The Junior Cert exams will end on June 21, followed by the Leaving Cert on June 23. The results of the Leaving Cert will be available on August 15, while the Junior Cert results will be released in mid-September.