IT IS probably every exam candidate's nightmare. Playing basketball, you break a finger on your right hand two days before the exam. Or you get ill half way through the exams. What do you do?

People get sick and have accidents in June just as at any other time of the year, and the exams branch in Athlone is ready for such disasters.

Every year, for example, a few students end up sitting the exam in hospital. The Department provides a superintendent who takes a sealed envelope of exam papers to the hospital, gives them to the patient and then supervises in the normal way. The candidate must sit the exam at the same time as everyone else the venue of an exam can change to accommodate an ill student, but the timing cannot because of the danger of a leak.

A student struck with something contagious, but not serious enough to be hospitalised, can be provided with a separate supervisor to "enable her to sit the exam in a different room within the school. A student with a broken arm or hand may be facilitated to dictate her exams on to a tape recorder.

The Department is, in fact, very accommodating, but the request must come from the school principal to ensure that it is genuine. Thus students who have been hit by disaster should immediately contact their school principal. The one thing the exams branch cannot do is to postpone someone's exam or allow a later sitting.

If something goes wrong during an exam, such as the student getting sick halfway through, the superintendent should normally make a report to the exams branch. However, it is a good idea for the candidate to ask the principal to make a report too. It may not make any difference in how the student's papers are marked, but it could be useful to alert examiners as to why part of the paper is not answered.