In a week's time, more than 100,000 parents will begin taking what many regard as the most important test of their lives. The results will rank them in comparison with other parents. Those who have passed on the best genes for test-taking will get the highest scores - though points will also be awarded for parenting skills such as positive role-modelling, boosting self-esteem and naked ambition.

Already, parents are gathering in huddles in second-level school car parks around the State, as they exchange notes on studying techniques. The words "maths" and "Irish" are enough to induce high blood pressure in even the hardiest amongst them.

The competition starts practically in utero, when the child's name is put down for the best second-level schools, though Montessori figures largely too. By the time the Leaving Cert results come out 17 years later, anxiety has peaked. The higher the score, the better the product produced by the parent.

This is ridiculous, of course. And dangerous. Yet it's not too far from the way some parents are thinking - unconsciously, at least. So-called "exam stress" takes up too much newsprint at this time of year, but what is often unacknowledged is that some of this stress is created by parents who see their children as reflections of their own status.

"The constant search for the perfect home with the perfect children all taken care of by the perfect parents is a feature of our society today," writes Reamonn O Donnachadha, a psychotherapist and school principal, in The Confident Child.

"This search for perfection in society is generated by a deep, unconscious dissatis faction with the self . . . . A parent wants to fulfil unlived ambitions and tries to do this through the child. By idealising, that is conferring `special' or `perfect' status on the child, the parent demands that the child has to be perfect to get approval. If he fails, he is punished by not being loved."

Parents will never admit that they will stop loving their children if they don't do well in the Leaving Cert, but for the young people themselves, the enormous fear is not of "failing" to get enough points to do medicine at TCD or whatever. The real terror is of being rejected and letting parents down. The Judgment Day mystique that surrounds the Leaving Cert is founded in a fundamentally unfair regime that deter mines a young person's future career based on a single set of exams taken at a particular moment in time. The exam rewards those who perform well under pressure and doesn't measure other qualities, such as emotional intelligence.

US parents are as ambitious for their children as the Irish, but the system is nowhere near as cut-throat as it is here. University and college admissions are not based on a single exam, but on a rounded view of the student's total achievement and personality.

An exam result is involved - in the form of a three-hour standardised examination called the SAT, which purports to evaluate students' "scholastic aptitude". There are two sections, verbal and quantitative reasoning, and points are awarded on a scale of 200 to 800 for each.

So if you want to go to Harvard, a score over 1300 is generally required, though this is not the only criterion. And if your score isn't high enough for the Ivy League, there are many other university options.

A variety of factors

However, the SAT score is not the only factor. Admissions offices also consider the high-school transcript (gathered via continuous assessment); extracurricular activities; background (positive discrimination operates for young people from disadvantaged minority groups); letters of recommendation; and essays.

Career choice then waits until the student has already started university.

The SAT was taken up by the American educational establishment as the society moved from aristocracy to meritocracy. The idea was that Harvard admission should not be based on whether or not your father went there. The Leaving Cert is overtly meritocratic - except that we all know it doesn't work that way. The Irish education system is heavily weighted in favour of the advantaged. In other words, what really matters is who your parents are.

Parents should be protesting a system which treats their children like academic cattle, though the most vocal parents are already at the top of the social heap and are unlikely to complain.

Instead, they have points fever and even want league tables published. Who cares if other schools and children are listed as "failures"? These vocal adults - bent on "success" - are determined that their children will measure up to their parents' ambitions.