It was a tense run-in to the Junior Cert results.
Students chatted and greeted each other nervously as they arrived at Mount Carmel Secondary School in Dublin's north inner city yesterday morning.
Classes were under way so they were ushered quickly into the school hall where the noise could be contained. The girls lined up and nervous chatter got louder as principal Gerard Cullen handed out the white envelopes one by one.
Some students grouped together, ripping the envelopes open. Voices rose and students gasped with delight. "One, two, three, four. . . seven honours!" one cries out. "I can't believe it!"
Slightly apart from the commotion and huddled on a set of steps by the stage are two girls, looking with great intensity at their results papers. Their expressions were hard to read. They had either done very well or very badly. Whatever the case, they couldn't believe their eyes.
On closer inspection, one of the girls, Nemita Dookhy, was almost crying with delight. "I really thought I'd get a D in English," she said, showing a results paper full of As, Bs and Cs in higher-level subjects. She came to Ireland from Mauritius just two years ago.
Sitting beside her is Kerilane Garcia who also got all honours in higher-level subjects including a B in higher-level Irish. "I'm really surprised," she said. "I came to this school from the Philippines in first year. I thought I'd only do Irish for a year, but I decided to keep it up." The shock was subsiding and laughter was taking over from the tears.
It was just past 11 o'clock, and in O'Connell School, North Richmond St, the pupils getting their results had been and gone. Principal Michael Finucane was a happy man. "Excellent," he said. "Some foreign students managed the Junior Cert course in a remarkably short time."
The story was upbeat in schools across the country. St Aloysius in Carrigtwohill, Co Cork, was celebrating results that included 11 As at higher level for student Freya Vaughan. The top Junior Cert result was achieved by Michael McCrohan, a boarder in the Cistercian College, Roscrea, with a tally of 13 As at higher level..