THE MINISTER FOR Education has wished Irish students well as they get ready to sit their exams this morning.
The Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn TD, said he is wishing 116,845 students across the country the best of luck, describing it as an “important time for all of the students involved”.
Over the next couple of weeks students have an opportunity to show all they have learned over the last few years, and marks the culmination of their hard work.
The Minister said he recognised this can be a stressful time for students, and urged them to “avail of the excellent supports offered by teachers, parents, families and friends at this time”.
In total, 53,749 Leaving Certificate students, 2,853 Leaving Certificate Applied students and 60,243 Junior Certificate students will take the exams, while almost 90 curricular subjects will be examined.
Native speakers from other EU countries will sit examinations in their mother tongue at Leaving Certificate level in 15 non-curricular languages, such as Czech, Latvian and Polish.
Project Maths
This is the first year that all Junior Cert students will be examined in at least some elements of the Project Maths curriculum, and those sitting the Leaving Cert will be answering questions from the new syllabus for the second year.
This year, senior-cycle students will be examined in four of the five strands of the new programme. For the second year running, students sitting Higher Level Maths in the Leaving Cert can gain 25 bonus CAO points and the Department of Education said that it had seen increased numbers of students opting to take the Higher Level Paper.
The Minister commented:
I am delighted that 4,000 additional students this year are opting to sit the Higher Level Maths paper. Whilst students can change their minds about this up to the time of the exam itself, students should have faith in their ability.
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