Wednesday, June 9th, looms large in the calendar for some 125,000 students. The start of the State exams, it marks the beginning of the end of school days for Leaving Cert candidates.

Some 60,187 students are scheduled to begin their Leaving Cert, a substantial drop on the 65,584 entries last year.

Some 54,000 of these students are listed to take the Leaving Cert for the first time, with about 5,000 repeat candidates and nearly 1,000 VTOS. And 64,823 candidates should begin their Junior Cert exams on the same day. (The actual numbers sitting the exams always falls somewhat short of the entries.)

As usual, students will spend the first day grappling with their English papers.

Pens lubricated, the exams continue until Thursday, June 24th, for Junior Cert students taking Latin, technology or classical studies. Leaving Cert students taking music or engineering must battle on until June 25th. This year, the new junior cycle subject, Civic Social and Political Education, will be examined for the first time and the new Leaving Cert music and business syllabuses also comes under the microscope.

Almost all Leaving Cert candidates will sit Irish, English and maths, with maths recording the highest number of entries at 62,510. The next most popular subject is French, with some 38,000 entries, followed by geography (31,000 entries) and biology (30,000 entries). At the other end of the scale, there are 222 entries for Italian, 133 entries for Latin, and 11 for Greek.

Already a cause for concern, the numbers taking the hard sciences continue to slide. This year, there are 9,509 candidates entered for physics compared with 10,011 last year, while 7,217 students have entered for chemistry compared with 7,544 entries last year.

TUI education officer Billy Fitzpatrick says the drop in numbers is "of major concern" to the union. There is a shortage of physics and chemistry graduates available to teach as they are "being filched by industry, which can afford to pay more. This represents a serious decline in the status of the teaching profession and the Department of Education must address this in the context of pending pay negotiations," he says.

With some 40 Leaving Cert subjects and about 30 Junior Cert subjects on offer, the exams branch of the Department of Education and Science in Athlone is working at full speed.

Stationery boxes are being despatched to 4,500 exam centres. The actual question papers will only be delivered on the eve of the exams. About 3,500 examiners have been mobilised to deal with the written papers.

ASTI deputy general secretary John White says the professionalism of everyone concerned with this "extraordinarily complex and large administrative performance is quite astonishing". Paying tribute to both the examiners, superintendents and Department of Education officials, he quotes a former Minister of Education who said that "if a comma is left out in the Leaving Cert higher-level, the Government falls".

All exam candidates should receive an information booklet this week which takes them through the process from exam to results to appeals. This year, for the first time, Leaving Cert exam candidates will have the option of viewing their marked scripts in all subjects.

Last year, this was limited to subjects which did not have a practical or project component.

Martin Hanevy, principal officer with the exams branch, says some 7,500 students viewed scripts last year and of these 6,190 decided to appeal their results. "This was half the appeal rate of 1997. Without question, it was a success. The feedback was very positive. "There were some concerns at school level but the logistics did not prove insurmountable. It did put us at the cutting edge. Britain picked up on it and the British Secretary challenged his exam boards to follow the Irish and New Zealand lead . . .

"Our message is that in a very big system, with thousands of examiners and thousands of candidates, some things will go wrong - but this system allows people to see for themselves."

Of the 434,000 grades awarded last year, only a tiny proportion, 1,050, were changed at appeal. Of these, the overwhelming majority were upgraded; only a handful were downgraded.

This possibility of being downgraded was introduced last year along with the viewing of scripts. Hanevy says in the interests of "fairness and transparency" downgrades had to be brought in. Candidates are downgraded only in the case of "manifest injustice". "What is the appeals process about? It's for aggrieved candidates who feel their results are out of kilter. It's not a speculative punt," Hanevy says.

This year, the results of the Leaving Cert will be in schools on August 18th. Students will receive a personalised form with these results and they must indicate, on this form, that they wish to view scripts. The completed form must be returned to the organising supervisor by August 26th.

There will be three three-hour viewing sessions early in September - on the evening of Friday, September 3rd, and in the morning and afternoon of Saturday, September 4th. Students who wish to appeal must then adhere to a very tight timetable as their appeals must be with the Department of Education by Wednesday, September 8th. Hanevy says this means students must get their bank giros stamped (£25 appeal fee per subject, refunded if the mark is upgraded) on Monday or early Tuesday morning so the form can be in the post on Tuesday, September 7th.

The reason for the rush is "that we must try to get the results of the appeals out by early October. This gives us roughly three weeks. Papers are completely re-marked to the original marking scheme by a different examiner. If the new examiner agrees with the original mark, the process ends there. But, if there is disagreement, then the paper must be re-marked by a second and possibly a third examiner, in order to get a majority decision."

And there's a further court of appeal, in the shape of exams commissioners. These commissioners ensure that due process has taken place, but do not re-mark papers.

There has been some confusion in schools about the exams timetable, as changes were made to the early draft version which was circularised last September for consultation purposes. The definitive version is now with schools. It is also posted on the Department's website (www.irlgov.ie/educ).

Also on this website, there is a discussion document by an expert advisory group which reviews the special arrangements for exam candidates with special needs.

The document notes that the Leaving Cert "is a key point in the lives of students in the Irish educational system. On the one hand, performance in the exam is taken to represent students' achievements after 13 or 14 years of education. On the other, it is used to make important decisions about students' future education which in turn seriously affects their life choices." Assessment is carried out by external examiners in written, oral or aural format and "some candidates experience difficulty, or may even find it impossible, to communicate what they know in this situation".

The Minister for Education says "providing for students with special needs in an examinations context presents a number of challenges including identification of need, effective and equitable provision and the treatment and reporting of candidate performance".

Among the questions raised by the paper are whether the work of candidates conducted with special provisions should be processed in the same way as the products of other candidates. Or should the work be identified and scored under special arrangements?

Should life circumstances be taken into account, or should the examiner confine himself or herself to the assessment of the material that is actually presented? How should errors in punctuation, grammar and spelling be treated?

There is also the vexed question of deciding who should get special provision. "Several problems arise in determining the extent to which learning difficulties, as distinct from physical difficulties, might interfere with a candidate's examination performance."

Difficulties have arisen with the use of psychologists' reports, notes the document, with "significant divergences" between psychologists in the private sector and those employed by the Department of Education and Science.

Written submissions are invited from interested individuals and groups in respect of the issues raised in the discussion paper and in relation to special arrangements generally.

This discussion paper does not affect this year's exam arrangements for candidates with special needs.