World Cup fever must take the back seat

Football and exam fever coincide tomorrow as more than 132,000 students begin their Junior Cert and Leaving Cert exams on the first day of the World Cup. Unfortunately, for fervid fans, the afternoon English papers clash with the beginning of the match.

The traditional early morning pre-exam preparations - finding batteries for the calculator, declining breakfast, losing and finding exam numbers and pencil cases, deciding to eat after all - may have to be extended to include pre-setting the video recorder.

More than 65,000 students will sit the Leaving Cert this year while more than 67,000 have entered for the Junior Cert. With three versions of the Leaving Cert on offer, Department of Education figures show 2,450 candidates registered for the Leaving Cert Applied and 6,527 for the Leaving Cert Vocational. LCA students are in the enviable position of having already completed two-thirds of their assessment. LCV students take three link modules - enterprise education, preparation for work and work experience - as well as their "traditional" Leaving Cert subjects.

The Leaving Cert is not only for school-based students. Of this year's 65,584 students, there are 4,621 external candidates and 5,226 repeat students. This compares with 4,674 repeat candidates last year.

As always, the three staple subjects have attracted the highest number of Leaving Cert entries with 63,361 students registered for maths, 62,439 for English and 59,080 for Irish. More than 30,000 candidates will sit French, geography and biology, while close to 25,000 will grapple with business organisation and home economics.

Some subjects fall into the minority sport division. For instance, only 163 students will take Leaving Cert Latin, while 11 will take Greek and 170 will sit Italian.

At Junior Cert, Irish, English and maths are also the most popular exam choices closely followed by geography, history, science, French and business studies.

Leaving Cert students sitting their exams this year are not saying a final farewell to their opuses when they hand them up to the invigilator. For, if they wish, they can be re-united with their scripts in September.

For the first time, Leaving Cert students will be allowed to see their marked papers - though the ASTI has instructed its members not to co-operate. Marks for orals, aurals and practicals will also be made available. It is expected that scripts will be returned to schools early in September and students will be allowed supervised access to them.

In the past, students applied for rechecks in the dark, having to rely on hazy recollections of their performance months previously. This year, students should be in a much better position to judge the need for a recheck. The final date for appeals will be September 10th, an improvement on last year's date of August 26th.

Errors in the addition of marks for various questions and sections have been found on appeal in the past. These will now be self-evident to candidates and a fast-track rectification system, with no appeal fee, has been proposed. Other appeals will continue to involve a full re-marking with the retention of the standard fee of £25 per subject. This fee is refunded if a student is upgraded. However, it has been criticised as it further disadvantages disadvantaged students.

The number of students requesting rechecks has been growing steadily for the past few years. Last year, 31 subjects were examined at Leaving Cert. In all, 425,000 grades were issued. Some 11,747 grades were rechecked and 1,364 were upgraded.

Of these, 527 students took their appeals to the final tier, the independent exam commissioners, and there were two further grade changes. The independent exam commissioners, who were appointed for the first time last year, effectively act as ombudsmen, ensuring that due process has taken place. They do not remark the papers.

It was not possible to be downgraded in the past but students who appeal this year will risk downgrading.

The logistics involved in running the State exams each year is staggering. This year, the estimated cost of running the examinations is £16.1 million of which about £5.2 million will be recouped in fees.

For Junior Cert students, the exams end on Wednesday, May 24th, with Latin and classical studies. Leaving Cert students taking applied maths, Greek, music or engineering must battle on until May 26th. The results will of the Leaving Cert should be in schools on Wednesday, August 19th, while Junior Cert students must wait until mid-September to see how they fared. Results of Leaving Cert rechecks will be in schools in early October.