Jet set for the Junior Cert

TWO Donegal students are today sitting their Junior Certificate exams in an Amsterdam hotel before going on to pick up first prize in a major European science competition on behalf of their classmates.

Kim McFadden and Shane McMenamin travelled to the Netherlands yesterday evening to pick up the award from the European Chemical Industry Council on behalf of their class in St Columba's College, Stranorlar Co Donegal. But first they had to fulfil an equally important engagement - sitting their German and materials technology papers under the watchful eye of Tony Dolan, an inspector from the Department of Education.

This impromptu and very un-Irish exam centre - in a room at the Hotel Damrak in central Amsterdam - also opens at a very un-Irish time - 6.30 a.m. This enables the two students to finish in time to attend the award ceremony later this morning.

For security purposes, they are being accompanied to the awards ceremony by the Departmental inspector, who remains by their side until the materials technology exam is well underway in Ireland this afternoon.

The students, together with their science teacher Ann Burke and school principal Brian McAuley, are returning to Ireland at the weekend, where they will complete the rest of their Junior Cert exams next week in more conventional fashion.

In the competition, St Columba's came out ahead of more than 200 entries from 19 European countries, a remarkable achievement which tops even last year's second place in the competition by students of St Ailbhe's in Tipperary town.

The good news for the other St Columba's students involved in the project, which looked at asthma in schoolchildren, is that the whole team and the teacher have won a week long trip to another European country, to be taken when the exams are out of the way.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said special exam arrangements of this kind were not unprecedented. Last year, a junior football team travelling to the US was facilitated, and this year a member of the RTE Youth Orchestra is sitting his Leaving Cert in Lisbon while participating in the European Young Musician competition. This student has also been accompanied by an inspector from the Department of Education.

In the case of the Donegal students, the Department paid the costs of the inspector to travel to Amsterdam. RTE contributed to the additional exam costs for the youth orchestra member.