A Ukrainian student who came to Ireland two years ago with poor spoken English got the maximum 625 points in her Leaving Cert and has been accepted for her chosen course in Dublin City University (DCU).
Taisiia Korenska, a student at Castlecomer Community School, Co Kilkenny, said her result was the product not just of her work ethic but also because she likes studying. “It’s like my hobby.”
Taisiia, or Taya as she is called in Castlecomer, got H1s in Maths, Russian, Physics, Engineering, Biology, and Design and Communication Graphics, as well as a H5 in higher level English. She plans to study Biomedical Engineering in DCU.
When she and her mother, Olena, came to Ireland in June 2022, leaving father Yaroslav and older brother Oleksey behind, they ended up living in the countryside outside Castlecomer, which was very different from her home city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine.
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“The only thing I knew about Ireland was stereotypes. Everyone had red hair and at the end of the rainbow there is always a cauldron of gold, with leprechauns,” she said.
However, living in peaceful rural Ireland made it easier to adjust, she said. With poor spoken English, she started in Castlecomer Community School that September and was immediately treated well.
“We didn’t have much money but my school gave me free books and a free uniform, which was a gesture of courtesy, if I can put it that way, and I immediately liked all of my teachers. The students were a bit harder to get used to, but I managed to find a friend group, who were a great support.”
In Dnipro she attended an “elite” secondary school where students had to pass an exam to get in and continue to meet the required grades if they wanted to stay.
The teachers there were more harsh than the teachers in Castlecomer and the students more disciplined and less talkative, she said.
“Students there, I would say, were hard working, a bit stressed, you couldn’t talk to them and chill.” The students in Castlecomer were “more relaxed”.
The experience of the school in Ukraine encouraged her work ethic but, she said, her mother, who works in a hospital in Kilkenny, is also very hard working and energetic and curious. “So, you know, apple and apple tree.”
She has been in contact with her father since getting her results and he was full of praise, she said.
“He said he was double proud, firstly because it was a great result, and, secondly, because English is only my third language [after Ukrainian and Russian] and I managed to come to this country and pull this off. So, yeah, he is double proud.”
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