The paper mountain is on the move once again

The big wheels started rolling on Monday. The great exam paper trail was underway. The secure distribution of those precious exam papers to all 4,400 centres throughout the country was planned with the precision of a military operation.

It was raining as the trucks pulled out of the Department's base in Athlone on Monday morning in convoy. There was a big ten four, ten four vibe. The fate of over 65,000 Leaving Cert and 2,450 Leaving Cert Applied students hung in the balance as the great cavalcade got under way. The strategist at the centre of this great journey is Martin Hanevy, principal officer of the Department of Education and Science's exams branch in Athlone. "We've been here all weekend," he says, with a proud smile. "The staff has been working seven days a week, all over the June bank holiday.

"It's enormous and challenging to make sure everything goes right. The trucks started rolling at about 10 a.m."

Like Napoleon, he breathes a sigh of relief as he surveys a near-empty car park. The troops are in place at all of the centres. The trucks are on their way. Everything is timed and the schedule is working. The park was patrolled by extra security staff while the trucks were left packed and ready over the weekend. They have gone out to 13 distribution points. A remaining four trucks, which moved out at cockcrow yesterday morning to the remaining distribution centres in Dublin, Sligo and Thurles, were still under guard on Sunday night but the main part of the move had been completed by Monday lunch-time and Mr Hanevy couldn't help smiling as he turned inside and surveyed the empty corridors. "It's like a morgue in here now, today it's silent," he says.

Although "it's enormous", everything has gone like clockwork. The staff have been packing the papers since last Thursday night. There's only an odd loose page lying about. People are sitting at their depleted desks, looking slightly crumpled, but as any young essayist might say, they look tired but happy. They've sorted, counted, parcelled, labelled, bar coded and packed the papers into strong boxes.

Each box has its own key and each one has been locked securely. The staff in Athlone have seen the strong boxes loaded onto pallets and packed into the SDS containers and then they've waved them goodbye. Once the signal was given, they were on their way. "It's the calm before the storm," says Hanevy, who has been involved in this yearly process for the past 20 years. "I would have seen the operation grow from 2,500 centres in the late Seventies and early Eighties up to 4,500 centres now. It's almost doubled." The last four SDS lorries left at 4 a.m. According to Mr Hanevy, they "roll during the night."

All the strong boxes were collected by the exam superintendents yesterday, brought to the country's 4,400 examination centres and their contents were unlocked, counted and checked in readiness for this morning's "off."

At 9.45 a.m. this morning the precious cargo, those gleaming sheets of exam papers in various shades of pink, yellow, white, green, blue and purple, will be laid on the desks of nervous and excited youngsters sitting their Leaving or their Junior Certificate exams. The work of Martin Hanevy and his team is ongoing. "There's no lull," he adds. Right up to kick-off time this morning, Mr Hanevy's team was making sure that exam supervisors were available and in place. There are always last minute cancellations because of sickness, accident or death. Also special arrangements have to be made for students who are taken ill.

On Monday, there was a call to the Department's offices in Athlone from St Mel's College in Longford town. A student had fractured his fingers at the weekend. He will need special exam arrangements. Another call alerts them about a student who has been called to Beaumont Hospital for a kidney transplant. This student will also need special arrangements.

"All of human life is here," says a wry Mr Hanevy. And there are always superintendents who have to drop out at the last minute for a range of reasons, he says. There is a reserve list of teachers who are ready to do exam supervision work. Also exam superintendents will phone when there is a shortfall in the number of exam papers. The team in Athlone will have to make arrangements to get extra copies down to that exam centre quickly. Once this morning's exams are completed the answer papers will be returned to Athlone, and the great paper trail will continue as over 3,000 examiners will eventually come to collect the scripts.

"We are all the time improving our system," says Mr Hanevy, in particular, he says in the wake of the difficulties in the practical art exam in 1995. Last year the examinations branch has introduced "a very sophisticated bar code system" to help identify, track and monitor the movement of packages. "This worked well," he says. "It empowered us with more information so that we knew with certainty what happened any one packet. All practical material was collected on the one day last year and this arrangement will also be in place this year."

In total 132,000 second-level students will sit State exams this month. And this year for the first time, students will be able to see their written papers after they have been marked.