RUAIRI QUINN, Minister for Education and Skills:I sat my Leaving Certificate in June 1964. Earlier that academic year, John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The sixth year boarders in my school, Blackrock College, were allowed by the priests to stay up and watch the extensive TV coverage. The previous June, the US president had made his historic visit to Ireland. But, in recent times, we have become somewhat used to such visits.

There was no points system in those days, and a pass Leaving Cert was all that was needed to enter the Cork, Dublin and Galway Colleges of the National University of Ireland. Archbishop John Charles McQuaid still reigned in his Dublin archdiocese and Catholics still required permission to attend Trinity College. A growing number of Catholic families were beginning to decide that matter for themselves. There were only four universities in the country. Limerick and DCU, not to mention the Institutes of Technology, were still to arrive on the landscape of Irish higher education.

My parents had sent me in as a boarder for my last year so that I would not be distracted in my studies. As it turned out, I was, but not by the girls of Sion Hill. Sport in general, and athletics in particular, took up a lot of my time.

I had a good academic record and knew that I would easily pass the Leaving. Students today act very rationally in their choice of subjects for the very competitive modern Leaving Certificate exam and its accompanying CAO points system. We did too, but in a different way.

I gave up history in fifth year because I was not interested in the Medieval period which was set for the exam I would have had to take. Besides, Fr Michael O’Carroll, known affectionately as “the Doc”, was not teaching it.

I also stopped studying Latin at Easter time, as I had enough subjects to get my Leaving. The sixth-year boarders had two organised study periods, with supper in between from 7pm to 8pm each night. Half were supervised in the study hall, and the others, including myself, were allowed to study on our own in our bedrooms.

I was literally in the running for an athletics scholarship to the United States and I wanted to concentrate on my training.

I asked the dean of sixth year, Fr McCarthy, for permission to do an hour of training each evening from 6pm to 7pm, while the rest of the year were studying. We spoke for about 10 minutes. He accepted my assessment of my exam prospects and wished me well, inquiring as to which US college I was going to apply.

As the evenings stretched out between the months of April and May, I trained with other athletes under the inspirational guidance of our coach, Tony Farrell, who sadly is no longer with us.

I did succeed in getting a scholarship offer from Berkeley in California, but I would not be allowed to study architecture because of the extensive time commitment it involved. So I stayed in Ireland.

The start of the examinations finally arrived in the first week of June. About 120 students in my school sat the Leaving Cert that year. I managed to get 60 per cent or more in English, French and art. That meant I now had an honours Leaving Cert, but only just!

There was nothing like the pressure which exists today. Three years later, when my brother Declan sat the exam, an honour in one subject was required to go to university.

Declan studied medicine in Trinity. My mother felt the archbishop was too busy, what with Vatican II and all that, so she did not bother to ask his permission.

Only 10 per cent of all the Leaving Cert students of 1964 went on to university or other third level colleges such as the Royal College of Surgeons, what is now DIT, or the National College of Art and Design. This year, as much as 65 per cent will enter third level directly from our post-primary schools, not to mention many mature and part-time students who find themselves in our seven universities, 18 Institutes of Technology and other colleges that make up our third level system.

Things have really changed since 1964, and one thing is certain. I would not get into architecture at UCD today with my Leaving Cert results!