EXAM TIMES:OVER 55,000 Leaving Cert students will have a more user-frienedly exam timetable this week after a review by the State Exams Commission (SEC).
The SEC will this year continue the rebalancing of the timetable, which began last year. This comes after concerns that the old timetable was too demanding.
The SEC says it has designed this year’s timetable to find a better balance between those papers with a strong writing requirement and those with a strong maths/science basis.
The timetable also gives a better balance between subjects that almost all candidates take and minority subjects, especially over the critical first week of exams.
Most students now benefit from a free half-day in the first three days of the exams.
This year, students will no longer be asked to take English and chemistry on the one day. Instead, the chemistry exam has been moved to next week and replaced by engineering. The moves comes after feedback received by the Department of Education from a panel of students last year.
This year’s timetable sees two new subjects – technology and design and communications Graphics (which will replace Technical Drawing). This year, 343 students will sit the Leaving Cert exam in Polish while 183 will take Lithuanian.
A total of 61 students will also sit the Leaving Cert in Tripoli, Libya.
The State exams are a huge logistical challenge for the SEC including;
- The production of over three million exam papers made up of 37 million A4 pages.
- The setting of exams in 89 curricular and 15 non-curricular subjects .
- The recruitment of more than 6,000 examiners to mark the exams and over 600 drafters, setters and translators to develop 254 different test instruments – including oral tests, aural recordings, practical briefs, project briefs, portfolio and course work items as well as the written examination papers.
The exams begin on Wednesday with English Paper 1 and Home Economics.
Exam results will be issued on August 12th.
This year, the exams will cost €70 million to run, about €9 million of this is funded directly by students who pay fees of €109 for the Leaving Cert and €103 for the Junior Cert exams.
Exam Times
Exam Times starts tomorrow. Mayo footballer, Aidan O’Shea, is this year’s Leaving Cert Diarist
