Today is D-Day for more than 140,000 Leaving and Junior Certificate students as they sit the first exams of the 2026 exam season.
While nerves are high for students, parents and even teachers, one topic has started a debate among Irish Times readers.
On Tuesday, we published a story about how one mother of a Leaving Cert student thought those with dyslexia should get more points.
Anita Reid Murphy said her daughter, Caoimhe (18), would walk into her first exam not only stressed about what might come up, but also about how she would answer the questions in the time allowed.
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Roughly a quarter of these students, or 30,000, will receive an accommodation in the exams through the Reasonable Accommodations at Certificate Examinations (Race) scheme.
The arrangement is designed to help students with special educational needs who have difficulty in communicating what they know to an examiner because of a physical, visual, hearing and/or learning difficulty.
Some of these accommodations can include reading assistance, scribes, voice-activated computers and being able to take the exam in a hospital.
The scheme is under review by the State Examinations Commission and at the start of 2026 a pilot measure was introduced giving Race students an extra 10 minutes in each exam. This is a provisional measure that will be reviewed before the 2027 exams.
Murphy said the 10 minutes was “frankly insulting” to students such as Caoimhe.
What do you think about this? Should students get extra points instead of assistance during the exams?
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