Coláiste Iognáid, Galway: Fionnuala Baynes won't forget her 18th birthday in a hurry. As she walked out of her honours Irish Leaving Certificate paper into the "Jez" (as Coláiste Iognáid is known) hallway in Sea Road, Galway, there were cheers and laughter and strains of "lá breithe shona duit".
She was surrounded, overwhelmed with candles and a cake. Her classmates, Michael Niland and Jude Fitzgerald, had also taken honours Irish and felt the paper was quite fair. "I wasn't expecting the Stair na Gaeilge questions," Michael said. "There were one or two poets who I studied well for and they didn't come up. I was a bit happier with the Irish paper one."
"Generally grand," was Jude's response. "The poems were fair, so was the prose."
Ciara Beuster from Oranmore was "expecting worse", given that it was a new course with no past papers to work from. Tara Barden from Woodquay, who took pass Irish, said her paper was "fine", while Caoimhe O'Donnellan from Barna said the honours Irish paper was "what we had expected".
Sarah Kelly from the Claddagh was also happy enough, as was Sandra Murphy from Salthill. Their teacher, Bernie O'Connell, felt that the honours paper was quite challenging overall, but fair, with good prose questions. He was also very happy with the Junior Cert honours paper which had made "good lively" use of "attractive material".
Deputy principal Catherine Hickey- Ó Maoláin had been busy during the week, blacking out some windows and generally endeavouring to reduce the sun's intensity.
Principal Paddy Lydon has witnessed 41 Leaving Certificates in his time and says he is always apprehensive. "We know how much pressure is there, how stressful it is, and our role is to make sure everyone gets through those very intense few days."
Jez students can opt for an Irish or English language stream; there are three Russians doing this year's Leaving. Mr Lydon favours spreading some of the curriculum burden through more project work during the school year.
"At the same time, the integrity of the exam is very important," he says. "It is much fairer now, though. It is far more geared to a variety of intelligences and has moved away somewhat from a narrow, academic way of learning."
"Leaving Cert English is one example of this," Mr Lydon says. "There is now a broader range of literature and poets like Sylvia Plath who mean more to younger people - and have more to say to that generation in relation to subjects like alcoholism or depression - than perhaps Wordsworth or Coleridge."
