The library in Beaumont Hospital has become an exam centre for repeat Leaving Cert student, John Paul O'Neill from Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny. He received a shock phone call last week telling him he would have to have a kidney transplant before his exams - an ordeal he was not expecting to face until afterwards.
He says the nurses have been very nice to him, are brilliant, but still haven't given him any exam tips. According to ward sister Anne O'Donoghue in Beaumont, John Paul "seems cool enough" about the exams. Last year, John Paul had to travel to Waterford Regional Hospital between Leaving Cert exams for dialysis. As a result of this - and three months absence from school - he was not offered a place on his preferred college courses - computers or accountancy in Carlow or Waterford IT.
St Mel's College in Longford has two students who have to complete their exams under special circumstances. A Junior Cert student has to take his in hospital and a Leaving Cert student, who fractured his fingers playing football on Sunday, has the use of a tape recorder to do his exams at the school. The principal at St Mel's admitted that "it's an upsetting experience for any student - they're under sufficient pressure as it is."
Graham Barry, from Irishtown, Dublin, a student at Marian College, Ballsbridge, also injured his hand in a recent accident and sat his Junior Cert English exam yesterday, also with the aid of a tape-recorder.
Some 3,000 students are sitting the exams in special situations. At least 2,774 had been notified to the Department up to the end of May and a further 200 have been added to the list in recent days. They are sitting exams in 500 individual centres.
Yvonne Healy adds:
It's all systems go for Mark Meleady, a Junior Cert pupil at Ashbourne Community School, Co Meath, a victim of cerebral palsy who is sitting his exams alone in a special examination centre in the school. Instead of pen and paper, Mark uses a word processor and is able to print out his own scripts without the aid of his personally assigned special-needs supervisor. Any dialogue between the two during the exams must be recorded and submitted to the Department of Education along with the scripts and the original disc. If you want a special needs centre in your school, you have to give the Department two years warning, according to Ashbourne's principal Mr Ciaran Flynn. However, the Department "can and do cope well in emergencies and are able to set up centres at extremely short notice if you need them," he says.
