With only a week to go until the Leaving Cert results come out, this is a good time to celebrate all that’s good – yes, you read that right – about our annual national ordeal.

Sure, it’s not perfect. My son sat the exam in June, so I’m aware of its faults. It’s not enough for honours English students to master the plays, poems and novels on the curriculum – they also need lessons in how to decode the baffling questions. Project Maths is a disaster, having introduced ambiguity to the one subject that, in my time, was refreshingly clear-cut. And students who unavoidably miss the June exams, for example through illness, still can’t sit alternative papers in time to start third-level studies with their peers.

Despite these and other flaws, I think the Leaving Cert has a lot going for it.

1 It promotes solidarity. I can’t think of anything that pulls the generations together in the same way as the Leaving Cert. For once, parents and other authority figures are entirely on the children’ side. We wish them well, ask how they’re handling the pressure. We tell them it’ll soon be over. We empathise, encourage and console.

On the Sunday before the Leaving began, our local church held a special Mass to honour the exam candidates. They were asked to stand up so that the rest of us could beam good vibes in their direction. They wrote their names in a special book so that volunteers could pray for them.

My son isn’t much for religion, but even he didn’t snub such warm support from his community.

As the exams kicked off, he was showered with good wishes from all sides. Texts and cards arrived, wishing him luck. I told him that even the President had issued a statement of support.

My husband’s work colleagues asked how the lad was getting on. Neighbours crossed the road, wanting to know how he was bearing up.

Now, be honest, how often do we adults whole-heartedly feel for our teenagers, rather than drone on about how they have it so easy, compared with us back in the day?

My theory is that this is the first generation of Irish children whose parents mostly sat the Leaving Cert. My parents didn’t. When I did my Leaving in 1979, the only adults I knew who’d survived it were my teachers. Most adults didn’t grasp how much work was involved, and in what depth. They got side-tracked in silly rows, such as whether honours Maths students should be allowed to use calculators, that only proved they hadn’t a clue.

Fast forward to 2014 and most parents vividly remember the Leaving. Some of us still have nightmares about it. We know how it felt to be in our children’ shoes, and we shudder in sympathy.

2 It makes old media relevant to the young. For the first time in his life, my son followed radio reports and read a newspaper every day to see what experts thought of the paper he’d just completed. I can’t think of another time when an issue of desperate significance to him and his mates was also of national interest.

3 It can’t be fiddled. The Leaving Cert is unique in Irish life in that it can’t be got around. It doesn’t matter how rich your parents are, how well connected they are, you’re still going to have to sit in a school hall and write till your hand falls off, same as everyone else.

Of course, affluent parents can stack the decks ahead of time. They can send their children to private schools with small classes; they can pay for grinds. But, come June, the child from the elite school is just a number, same as the one from the Deis school.

4 When it comes to allocating points, and hence university places, there’s no scope for discretion. This has its down side, because a child’s extraordinary work in any non-academic realm is completely ignored. On the up side, Daddy can’t swing a university place by writing a large cheque to the alumni fund.

Isn’t it good that opportunity at third level is immune from such insidious pull? In a State where we joke that the nation’s symbol is the harp because what matters most is the strings you can pull, that’s an achievement to be proud of.

5 It makes everything else seem easy. “It’s true what people say,” confided a lad who finished secondary school a year ahead of my son. “Just get through the Leaving Cert, and university is bliss.”

For myself, every single June since 1979 has been a good one, because, well, you know why. For many of you, no experience will ever be as draining.

Not even that intense moment when you click on the screen or tear open the envelope to learn your hard-won results.