A man from Waterford is hoping to set a record tomorrow when he receives the results of the 30 subjects he sat in this year’s Leaving Cert.
Eoin Jackson took on the massive challenge to help raise funds for the education project he helps to run for early school leavers.
He hopes to have passed a minimum of 23 subjects and a maximum of 28 and sat two thirds of the exams at higher level.
Mr Jackson teaches at the XLc Project, a family-run school established by his mother Nuala Jackson in 1998.
To date, it has put about 700 early school leavers from the southeast and other parts of the country through the Leaving Cert and Junior Cert exams.
Mr Jackson claims the methods used by the project to be unique. “They are based around mutual respect. The most telling endorsement of the project lies in the outcomes.”
Each year the small semi-voluntary staff puts an average of 70 students through the State exams, and the pass rate stands at between 86 per cent and 97 per cent annually. “These figures tend to astound teachers who have dealt with the students in their former schools, and who would not have considered that student capable of passing a Leaving Cert,” Mr Jackson says.
“Under the XLc pedagogy, we operate at a level where the student is always experiencing success . . . and once they’ve succeeded, the buzz of achievement becomes addictive, and they then want to do better.
“In this way we build up confidence and ability until the student is ready to tackle the Junior or Leaving Cert.”
Mr Jackson said the project “unfortunately” falls between stools at a bureaucratic level and that it has not received mainstream funding.
His mother Nuala, a former nun, told The Irish Times in 2008 that the school's motto was to "ignore the failures and reward success", which was the opposite of a normal education system which always said "could do better".