Broad smiles and happy faces

LORETO HIGH SCHOOL:THERE WERE broad smiles and happy faces on view when students at Loreto High School Beaufort in Dublin arrived to collect their results.

"That was a joke - I got 100 points more than what I needed. All that pressure for nothing," beamed Enya de Burca, from Rathfarnham, who intends to study international business at Dublin Institute of Technology.

"There's something that makes you think you're going to fail," said her friend Sarah Higgins, as they made their way out of the schoolyard clutching their brown envelopes.

"You hear thousands of people have failed maths and you start to worry you might have too, but then in the end you don't. The whole thing wasn't that hard at all," said Sarah.

Inside the school corridor, Rachel Quirke and Emma Claffey, also from Rathfarnham, were totting up their points and breathing a collective sigh of relief.

"I was nervous. I was in bits this morning, but I'm really happy now I got my points," primary school teaching hopeful Rachel said.

Emma, who hopes to study psychiatric nursing in UCD, was also relieved. "Some people seem a bit disappointed but I'm pleased. I did better in a lot of the subjects than I thought I would."

Both girls were anticipating much celebration in Dublin city centre last night, as well as the prospects of a group holiday to the Greek islands once the important business of their CAO applications is complete.

The troublesome subject of maths could be seen in practice in Loreto yesterday morning, with calculators an important accessory for many of the students as they anxiously totted up their points totals.

"Ugh, I only got 355. That's crap," said one disappointed girl.

"You'll still get arts," a friend said reassuringly as they walked away from the principal's office for perhaps the last time.

School principal Liz Cogan said she was delighted with the students' results, maths included. "They're just brilliant. We're happy with maths, English and Irish and in everything else across the board they've done really well," she said.

"It's an anxious time, but they have worked very hard. There have been a lot of people with high points, but that's not what it's about - it's about the whole spectrum and I'm very happy with that."