STUDENTS get exactly the same points for Leaving Cert grades in higher level English, Irish, history and geography. Yet, they have to sit two papers in both English and Irish and only one in the other two subjects.

Thus they put in a full day's examining in the two languages for the same benefit in terms of points as for the subjects which require only a single three hour exam.

There are two papers in maths also - as in technical drawing; the unfortunates taking art have three separate exams.

Can anyone explain why they must sit two exams in technical drawing but only one in physics? Only one exam in French or German, but two in Irish? Especially when all are of the same value in the end?

Similar anomalies exist in the Junior Cert. Thus there are two papers in English, Irish and maths - and business studies. How come Leaving Cert business organisation requires only one paper, but Junior Cert business studies requires two? Who does technical graphics require one paper in the Junior Cert but two in the Leaving?

There are further anomalies in the time allocated. Thus at higher level in the Leaving Cert, business organisation gets two and a half hours for the exam and accounting two hours and 45 minutes; history gets three hours, but economic history only two and a half.

But if you think this is odd, it's nothing compared to the marks allotted to each subject. At higher level in Junior Cert, the examiners give 180 marks for history and for geography, 320 for German and French and 360 for English. In the two paper subjects, paper 1 in business studies gets 160 marks, in English 180 marks - but in maths a massive 300 marks. So there are nearly as many marks for one paper in maths as for both papers in English.

And the point is that these marks are all, in a sense, irrelevant, as all subjects are graded as A, B, C, etc. But they can be misleading to a student who might well think that English with 360 marks is worth more than history with 180, whereas in fact they are graded in the same way and attract the same level of points.

Exam Times has received complaints about the fact that some exam papers carry exact details about marks allocated to each question and sub section of a question while others do not. Some papers effectively contain the whole marking scheme, with the exact marks allocated to each tiny sub section even down to two marks; others simply say 60 marks for the full question at the top and give no breakdown of marks per section; Junior Cert home economics only gives the overall marks per section and no marks for individual questions at all.

In some papers the exact marks are printed in brackets beside the question itself, in others it is part of the general instructions at the top of the section where you'd have to work hard to find it. Exam Times almost needed a magnifying glass to find the marks on some papers.

Surely it should be possible to get consistency across the exams?