Fianna Fáil education spokesperson Thomas Byrne has called for the cancellation of this year’s leaving certificate exams, saying that the current situation is “causing untold psychological damage to these students”.
The government announced in late April that the leaving certificate exams would begin on July 29th. However, the government did not mention the leaving certificate in its roadmap for reopening the country and easing coronavirus restrictions, which was published yesterday.
In a press statement today, Byrne criticised the government’s roadmap, saying that it “contains details about the phased reopening of certain sectors and industry, and sets out dates for the proposed lifting of certain restrictions but not once is the Leaving Cert mentioned. I believe this is a huge oversight and it has added to the already heightened anxiety among Leaving Cert students”.
“The time has come to make the call to cancel the Leaving Cert and take the pressure off students, parents and their teachers”, he said.
Byrne said that he had discussed “alternatives” to the exams with some colleges and Minister for Education Joe McHughByrne, adding that other possibilities “do exist and we must now switch our focus to them”.
A survey of around 28,000 leaving certificate students, carried out in April by the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union found that delaying the exams until the summer was the least popular option for sixth-year students.
Almost 50 per cent of students who responded to the survey said they wanted to cancel exams and use assignments they have already completed to determine their grades.
Incoming freshers are likely to start their college term “in October or November” due to the delayed correction of leaving certificate papers, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said in mid April.
The Taoiseach speculated about the new starting time during a live-streamed session of the Dáil.
According to a report by Newstalk, the Taoiseach said that “the view is that there will be sufficient time then to correct the papers and allow this year’s current sixth years to begin the college term – but that will probably be late: it’ll probably be October or November”.
“But as soon as we’ve more information, as soon as we’ve more certainty around that, the Minister for Education will put that in the public domain.”
