Sir, – Some say the world will end in 2013, I say it will end on June 6th, 2012 – at least it feels that way.
I am a Leaving Cert student and I have never been under so much pressure or stress in my whole life. Srá pictuirí, project maths, the poetry conundrum: Kinsella or Plath? And that’s only the start of it. I found the time to write this letter solely because it comes under my English revision. In sixth year, there are not enough hours in the day for the amount of stuff to be done, many students are juggling seven or eight subjects and trying to cram everything into one final year of hell. But why does the Irish education system do this to young people?
It’s all about points and entry requirements, the real concept of learning has been lost in translation and that is such a pity. Everything has to be learned off by heart in the hope that you’ll somehow be able to regurgitate and vomit it out on to the paper on the day of the exam.
I know I’m not alone in this suffering and stress, as thousands of fellow students will sit their Leaving Cert this year and thousands upon thousands before us have done so. But that’s what puzzles me most. Many people will agree that the points system is a farce, yet we do nothing to change it. You just get through it as best you can and then forget about it, leaving second-level students in the future subject to its pressures; an unjust account of one’s true ability, where it more or less depends on how you perform on the day. A system of continuous assessment, similar to those of Northern Ireland or Finland, would be much fairer and would prevent this anxiety-provoking milestone in young Irish people’s lives.
The Leaving Cert is a marathon. At the end of it you are left hoping that you’ll get by in this points race and – to put bluntly – not have to repeat this torture next year. – Yours, etc,