Fairness and common sense prevail for English paper mark 2

ANALYSIS:The replacement English paper was not there to catch anyone out, writes NIALL MacMONAGLE

SATURDAY WAS always one of the better days. The weekend is up and running and, after the lie-in, a day of ease and possibility stretches ahead. But all of a sudden the day is polluted.

Last Saturday 55,000 and more were up and out and heading into an exam paper that pupils were never supposed to sit. We had all banked on Keats and Bishop and Longley and Walcott in the poetry section and there they were last Wednesday – but only in Drogheda. They appeared to few but the split-second apparition was sufficient for it to be known and buzzed nationwide by early afternoon.

When Elizabeth I died in 1603, and even though they had horses at the ready, it still took three days for the news to reach Edinburgh. “Deception” and “Banquo” and “Cultural Context” and “Theme and Issue” and that quartet of poets are but a string of meaningless words to most. But for the class of 2009 Higher Level English pupils those same words were priceless and zipped and crisscrossed the country unbeknownst to Minister Batt O’Keeffe, Andrea Feeney, press officer with the State Examinations Commission and many other Very Important Persons. It was pupil power, it was technology. Cyberspace rocked.

They knew it on Inis Oirr, in Gweedore, in Drimoleague and Dalkey hours before the media got wind of it. People who had never heard of Elizabeth Bishop or Derek Walcott were suddenly in the know and saying their names: the pupils wanted that woman Bishop and that Walcott fellow. Now you see them; now you don’t.

The postponement, the contingency paper, the Saturday exam were put in place to ensure integrity. Strange how the newspaper you’re reading right now can be delivered within hours throughout Ireland. But 12 hours – give the Athlone-based commission from 7pm to 7am – were not enough to deliver 800 packages to 800 destinations. The good news is that there was a contingency paper and, better still, we now know that it was drawn up by a separate panel. This is both important and reassuring. The only one to see both is the chief examiner when he/she signs off on it. This means that fairness and common sense should prevail; the replacement paper should be very much in line with version one. And it was. The exam is not there to catch anyone out. I saw happy faces exit the exam centre.

Both Saturday’s Ordinary and Higher Level papers were contingency ones, both dateless, both with a black band on the fold.

And now we know that the Macbeth question this time round featured “Regicide and its consequences” and “Macbeth as compelling drama”. More open and general and inviting than before. The comparative modes were reassuringly the very same, “Cultural Context” and “ Theme and Issue”; and the four poets included Keats, Bishop and Walcott; but John Montague – 80 this year – replaced Michael Longley, who turns 70 next month.

The poetry questions themselves were more specific and challenging than usual and gimmick-free except for the Montague radio talk format. Scrap that.

But overall, no shocks, no surprises. And a beautiful unseen poem by Anne Carson.

What did the pupils make of it all? “It could have happened to anyone”; “Gave me more time to study maths”; “I say thank you Drogheda for beautiful, better Macbeth topics”; “I feel sorry for that guy, he must be a nervous wreck”; “We will survive.”

The class of 2009 have learned from Shakespeare’s Macbeth that “Come what come may,/ Time and the hour runs through the roughest day”, especially those three hours and 20 minutes last Saturday.

It was cloudy, windy, it poured rain: a perfect objective correlative for this sorry mess.

The State Examinations Commission refused to make available a copy of the original paper. Lighten up, guys! You could claw back some of the €1 million spent on the rearranged day if you set up a stall at Oxegen or Electric Picnic and sold those pink papers. That exam paper has iconic status. I can see it pinned up on bedsits and the back of the loo door for years to come. The one that got away.

Niall MacMonagle teaches English at Wesley College, Dublin. TEXT – A Transition Year English Reader, which he edited, was published last month by the Celtic Press