There is no more urban a school in Ireland than Mount Carmel girls' school opposite Bolton Street College of Technology in Dublin. Most of its 267 students come from the city centre flats complexes between the docks, the Royal Canal and the Phibsborough Road, with a smattering of "new Irish" from Nigeria, Russia and Cuba.
The essay titles in the first morning's ordinary English paper ranged from `A Perfect Day to Are we Irish a genuinely caring people?. Anita Brennan (18), from Dorset Street, had chosen the former, imagining she was already at college and telling how she managed to attract the attention of a boy she particularly fancied in order to get him to ask her out.
Olu Ebose, originally from Lagos, now from Tallaght, wants to study computer science and to work at "anything to do with engineering and technology". She even found a technological subject to write her English essay on: The first time I ever used a computer. Aged 16, she has only been in Ireland for three years, and says that for someone so young to be taking the Leaving Certificate is a tribute to the excellence of the Nigerian education system.
Labhina Ni Bhroin (18), from Phibsborough, wants to be a barrister. Not surprisingly for a fledgling lawyer, she was disappointed that there were no "crimes and murders" among the essay subjects on offer.
She had written on the topic Having to make an important decision about a young girl deciding whether or not to keep a baby after the father had made himself scarce. "Men don't usually stay around," she says with youthful resignation.
The Junior Cert students were full of talk. Roisin McInerney (15), from Seville Place, had answered questions in the higher English paper on the travel writer Bill Bryson's visit to Mississippi, and his humorous adventures with the local patois. She had written her essay on a mistaken case of bullying She has both an artistic and a practical side: she wants to be an actor, but also intends to go to college to study midwifery, because there will always be babies waiting to be born, even when acting jobs are few and far between.
Another budding artiste is Jennifer Boyle, from Beresford Street - only 14 in August - who wants to be a singer and starred in the school's production of Little Shop of Horrors.
She wrote her essay on an imaginary schoolgirl adversary, on whom she inflicted a sweet revenge by landing a job as a top surgeon while her enemy ended up at a counter in Dunne's Stores.
Tanya Karpova is a self-possessed 14-year-old originally from Kiev in the Ukraine, now living in Arbour Hill. She had written about the 1969 landing on the moon as her Great event in history. She wants to study computers and become a computer programmer, adding quickly that "if that gets too boring, I want to travel and continue doing art". Her hobby is painting portraits.
After only three years in Ireland, did she find answering questions in English difficult? "It's no problem at all to her - she's one of the best in the class," offered Jennifer Boyle.