Semesters: let's keep Christmas

A chara,

John Connolly's article on semesterisation (E&L, February 27th) drew attention to the impact on students' enjoyment of Christmas of the need to take examinations immediately after the festive period.

One obvious solution to this problem is to move the examinations to before the Christmas break. This would require moving the beginning of the first semester back to early/mid September, but would also bring the completion of the second semester forward by several weeks, with no overall change in the length of the academic year.

This would bring Ireland in line with the North American format. Apart from removing Christmas stress, the move would mean that visiting Erasmus students would not have to remain in Ireland into the New Year to complete their semester.

The main obstacle to an earlier start to the academic year arises in first year, due to the late issuing of Leaving Cert results. Solutions to this could include bringing the exams themselves forward, speeding up the processing of the exams or moving to an alternative method of allocating university places.

Regarding provision for repeat examinations, in my experience of the North American system no provision whatever is made for repeats. Neither are students expected to pass all modules, so long as they reach a satisfactory overall average standard.

It seems to me that Irish universities should follow the lead of other countries which have successfully operated the semesterised modular system for years. Our apparent inability to abandon the old when embracing the new probably means we will end up with a half-baked "Irish solution to an Irish problem".

Department of Geography, St Patrick's College, Maynooth.