Meet Our Officers: Joe Mee
My name is Joe and I'm a transition year student attending Scoil Ruain Killanuale. I am dyslexic and practice no religious. As a result of being different, I felt isolated and even bullied. I then did research on the topic of dyslexia and found many students had as bad or even worse school experiences. Talking with my peers and reading research on minority groups, I found one distressing fact. If you are different you will not be fully accepted in our education system. Therefore I want to help represent the minority's, giving a voice to those that often cannot be heard. I want to help achieve a school system that allows all students to achieve their full potential.I hope to have a productive year and encourage anyone that is in a minority group to come forward and be heard.
STUDENTS SCAPEGOATED... again
Press Statement
ISSU speaks out in opposition to using students as pawns in industrial dispute
Teachers are often too slow to embrace significant change, and on this occasion they have brought reasonable talks to a deadlock due to a failure to adapt. Teachers correct hundreds of school-based assessments for individual subject exams or indeed for in-house Christmas and summer exams. We would recommend that the anonymity attached to exam numbers provided by the State Examinations Commission be maintained, and that teachers swap exam scripts within the same school to address concerns over bias. This change is needed and we need to move with it.Joanna Siewierska, ISSU Education Officer, said “We are lucky to have some of the most dedicated and committed teachers teaching us, but once again industrial action on this scale during school hours means that students are being used as pawns in what ultimately is an industrial dispute not solely concerning educational reform. My teachers correct my Christmas and summer exams during the school year and when it comes to the award of the new JCSA, why is correcting these papers any different? We respectably ask teachers to refrain from industrial action in this manner and return to talks with the Minister for Education and Skills”.*** ENDS *** Contact: 01-443 4461 / communications@issu.ie
Leaving Cert Japanese
Shahed - Higher Level
At long last, the final exam! Being the only student in the whole school felt very strange, to say the least.The exam wasn't too tough. There were three comprehension questions, with questions in both English and Japanese, and plenty of grammar questions. There were also two essay questions on either your birthday or Christmas day and also about your school. These were quite nice topics, so I was happy! The listening was after the written exam and there was nothing very difficult about it.Weird to think it's all over now... It flew by! I hope you all enjoy your summer!
Please note: this post reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union
Getting your Leaving Cert results
Leaving Cert results day is different for everyone. There will be people who are dying to find out how they did and people who’d rather hide under the bed. Whatever happens and however you did, it’ll be ok. It is definitively not the be all and end all. Some of history’s brightest people didn't ace their exams or get where they wanted to be straight away.
Online or at school?
You can get your results at your school or from 12 noon online at www.examinations.ie. Do whatever you feel most comfortable with. Going to school can actually be a good option as you’ll be with your friends and you’re all in the same boat, and the camaraderie can get you through. Your principal and teachers should also be around to give you help and advice.That said, you might not want to be surrounded by people and that’s ok too.
Working out the points – take your time, don’t panic
After all the exams, adding together a few numbers might seem like a walk in the park, but with nerves, it’s easy to count things twice or not at all. Take a deep breath, and take your time. If you’re not the best at the old arithmetic, get out your calculator, and if you’re not sure ask someone to double check it for you. There is also a points calculator here.
The CAO offers
Results are out on Wednesday the 14th August, then come the celebrations (no matter how you did, it’s over, right?) and on Monday 19th August, the ‘first round’ of CAO offers will be sent to your house and uploaded to www.cao.ie – log on to find yours. The ‘second round’ will come out on the 28th August.Each offer will come with a date that you must accept it by – this is usually seven days later, so it’s important to be on the ball in terms of accepting it. There should be instructions about how to do that within the offer. The points required for each course will be published in the newspaper, so you should have a good idea what you might be offered in the coming days. Even if you haven’t hit the nail on the head in terms of points, if you’re not too far off you might still get an offer in the ‘second round’.
The rounds
In the first round, offers will be sent to people who got the required points or more for their CAO choices. In the second round, offers start to go out for any places that haven’t been filled and this keeps going until all places are allocatedIf you got the points for your first choice on either the degree or diploma list in the first round, you’ll be offered those and that’s it– you don’t have the option to pick your second choice, but hopefully you’ll be delighted with your choice.If you got the points for your second, third, or fourth choice on either list in the first round, you will be offered that, but may receive offers of your higher preferences in the second round. It’s ok to go ahead and accept these offers, and change to a higher preference if this arrives in the next week or two. Your latest acceptance will automatically undo any previous acceptances.However, if you deicide you’d like to stick with the original offer, you can, just by ignoring the new offer.In some cases, where too many people got the same points compared to the number of places available, there will be random selection of people accepted. Don’t worry, this doesn't happen very often. You might still get the offer as people accept and turn down places.Offers will continue after the second round until places are filled, and this might take a little while, but it also means that you might have options that you weren't expecting. That said, it’s good to keep making plans in the mean time.
Views, checks and appeals
If you want to view a paper, either because you want to have something re-checked or maybe because you’re thinking of repeating and want to see where you could improve, you need to apply to do this by the 23 August – so next Tuesday. There should be a form in your school that you can fill in.Viewings will take place on the 30th and 31st of August in your school, and you can bring one person with you – it might be good to ask the teacher of the subject you want viewed, as they should have the most helpful perspective on whether or not you should appeal.To re-check or appeal your result, you need to apply by the 4 September and pay a fee, and results of appeals are out in October. There’s more information on this process on www.examinations.ie. Good luck with your exam results from all at the ISSU
Leaving Cert English Paper 1
Hugh
Well that’s one down and far too many to go, delighted to have finally started! I’m cautiously optimistic about how English Paper 1 went, and hope everyone else who sat it is too! In short it was a fair and balanced paper which seems to have been well received all round. With an overall theme of memory the reading comprehensions were for the most part engaging and accessible. The “Question A” sections of Texts 2 and 3 contained questions which required students to react to visual material, and all three texts examined knowledge of features of style and asked for personal opinions on the effectiveness of the piece/overall quality of the piece.I did Question A from Text one despite being tempted to have a go at the Question B element of it. Text 1 was very accessible in contrast to previous years and both Question A and B were well received by students. Question A asked for three pieces of evidence in support of a claim about the author’s home place, a question on the author’s “very clear” attitude towards the small town she grew up in, and a question on the effectiveness of the piece as an example of good autobiographical writing. Question B asked students to write a letter to the author commenting on what interested you in the extract and the impact of your own home place on you.Then I got going on my selected question B, from Text 2 which asked for, oddly enough, a “proposal” to be submitted to the relevant authority regarding a person or event you feel should be commemorated, why they deserve to be commemorated and what form this commemoration should take. Must admit I was a bit unsure as to the exact format needed for a “proposal” but it ended up somewhere between a letter and an obituary! Regardless, two and a bit pages on the virtues of Martin McAleese await correction!The accessibility of the Comprehensions was off-set a bit by a few “quirky” and prescriptive essay titles such as “an inferior rock band howling for fame” which was to be the inspiration for a short story, and a speech on the importance of literature in people’s lives. I opted for a speech on what defines Irish national identity and I must say Leaving Cert History helped out considerably on that one!So that’s my spiel on Paper one, now for Paper 2!
Katarzyna
Hi everyone! I am sure that all of the Leaving Certs out there are delighted to have their first exam behind them. I most definitely am!The English paper one today was, in my opinion, a very nice paper. The theme was 'Memory' which was the first thing I noticed when I got my paper and I was fairly happy with that. When I was allowed to open the paper, I went to the very end to scan through the essay titles. They were not fantastic. I had prepared a short story and there were two essay assignments. One of the essays was to be inspired by "an inferior rock band howling for fame". When I saw that I couldn't believe my own eyes, so I looked at the second one which asked students to write about a young character eager to leave home. Both of these titles were not fantastic. The first one shocked me and even though I love rock music, I didn't do it because I had nothing prepared. I picked the other one because I was able to use some parts of the short story that I had prepared. I did a quick brainstorm and went on to look at the three texts.The first comprehension seemed okay, but when I saw the question about it being a good example of autobiographical writing, I knew that it was not something that I wanted to do. Section B seemed fine and I thought that I could perhaps do it if there was nothing better. Text Two was a very interesting comprehension. It was an extract from a speech made by Mary Robinson. I love Mary Robinson so I was eager to see if the questions suited me. Thankfully the questions were pretty straight forward, so I knew that this was my Question A. I had a quick glance at the Question B in Text Three. It involved writing a persuasive article for your school website supporting or opposing the idea of school outings. During school, I was a member of the Student Council so it was a good option for me. I wrote an article from the point of view of a Student Council member about the benefits of school outings.Then I went back to do my essay. My essay was about a girl, who was very smart but was poor and her father was an alcoholic. After she did her Leaving Cert, she got into a physics course in Trinity. Her physics teacher took her to Dublin and helped her start a new life away from her toxic family. She later became very successful and worked in CERN. Then at the end when she finally gets the Nobel prize she finds out that he died. He won't be there for her acceptance speech but he will always be in her heart as her guardian angel. Therefore the title of the essay was guardian angel. I came up with the title at the very end. I know the story is a bit fictitious but again, it wasn't something that I had prepared. Instead of panicking, I just went with the flow and gave it my best. And that is basically what you have to do.In the morning before my exam, my past principal, who by the way is amazing, came in to wish us good luck. I asked her for any last words of wisdom and she simply told me - "Just believe in yourself". After the first exam, I can honestly say that confidence and believing in yourself are very important. There might be a question that we won't be sure about and we will have to improvise a little bit or leave it and come back to it later. The knowledge is there, you just have to extract it at the right moment and let it flow through you. Best of luck to everyone sitting Paper 2 tomorrow. Please don't just look over Sylvia Plath because what if she's not there? Look over Rich and Boland and I know what everyone will say - "Boland was on last year". I know but if you all look carefully at past papers, there was a situation when Plath came up twice in a row in 2003 and 2004. The choice is yours.Look after yourselves and get plenty of sleep and chocolate!
ISSU Commentary
The general feeling from 57,000 thousand or so who sat the Leaving Cert exams were that they were generally far and the fact that iconic features such as Mary McAleese and Brian O’Driscoll came up, as well as the choice element were two major positives from the exams. However some students at Higher Level found the essay titles difficult to write about in a great deal of depth. Another iconic figure Mary Robinson came up which was again a positive. Overall students seemed relatively positive about two ‘fair’ papers.
Please note: blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union. Blogs are updated daily by 6.30 pm on scheduled examination dates.
JC Materials Technology (Wood)
James (Higher Level)
In the afternoon I had my final exam, Materials Technology (Wood). I like Materials Technology (Wood) and I enjoyed the exam as I didn't find it too difficult and the paper consisted of some nice questions. The exam was two hours long and I completed all required questions. I was in great form coming out of school today.I felt the Junior Certificate went well for me and I enjoyed it. I have worked hard for the last three years and believe that made all the difference. I will start my Transition Year in September. I'm looking forward to the experience and the activities that will be held outside the school and beyond. I will celebrate the end of my exams with family and friends. This probably will not last too long however, as I'm back to work full time at the stud next week. I'm looking forward to the summer and with this weather it will have to be great! Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family, my friends, my principal, my teachers and my superintendent for helping me complete the Junior Cert.The summer is eventually here, lets make it a good one! So that’s my lot lads. All the best, James