IT CAN’T HAVE escaped the attention of many that the Leaving and Junior Certificate examinations kick off today, with almost all of the 116,527 candidates sitting down this morning to begin English papers of various sorts and grades.
Aside from being a rite of passage for many Irish (and, indeed, Libyan) youths, the state exams are also a major logistical operation with hundreds of thousands of exam papers being concocted, sealed, delivered and distributed around the country with the minimum of details being released before they are given to students each morning.
Here, courtesy of the State Examinations Commission, are a selection of statistics showcasing the sheer size of the Leaving Certificate examinations.
88 – This is the 88th year of the formal established Leaving Certificate examinations, which was introduced in 1924. The decision to replace the inherited British academic system was one of the first decisions taken by John J O’Kelly, Ireland’s first post-partition Minister for Education.
20 – The Junior Cert is a far newer institution, coming into place in 1992 when the ‘Group Cert’ and the ‘Inter Cert’ were merged. This is its 20th year.
105 – The number of subjects being examined at his year’s exams, with 90 curricular subjects between the various grades and levels, and 15 non-curricular exams.
55,550 – The number of students sitting the established Leaving Cert exams this year. (Are you candidate number 1 or 55,550? Get in touch with us!) That number is up slightly on last year, when 54,479 registered for at least one exam.
3,245 – The number of students sitting the Leaving Certificate Applied exams. That’s down on last year, when 3,358 took it.
57,732 – The numbers taking the Junior Cert is up this year, with 56,086 people registering for it last time.
664 – The number of people involved in drafting last year’s State Exams, including setters and translators. They set 254 different types of tests, including orals, aurals and portfolio examinations
83,781 – The number of oral exams recorded in last year’s exams.
6,606 – The total number of examiners engaged last year, including 4,292 correcting written exams and 1,131 oral examiners.
3.1 million – The number of exam papers printed for last year’s exams.
Circa 38 million – The number of A4 pages used to print last year’s examination papers.
113,923 - The total number of examination results which were processed last year, comprised of 937,308 individual grades for various works.
12,820 – The number of appeals lodged across Junior and Leaving Cert exams last year.
Fewer than 10 – the number of Jewish students who had to remain quarantined in 2009 after the English Paper 2 exam was refixed for a Saturday morning in 2009 when the incorrect paper was distributed at one school in Louth. The Jewish students could not sit the exam on the Sabbath and so they sat the paper on a Sunday, being quarantined for the Saturday.
€1m – The approximate cost of having to reschedule that exam for the Saturday.
€34.9m – The fees paid to examiners, superintendents, and other contractors for last year’s exams. Not included is the €9.2m received by those staff, and by those of the State Examinations Commission, for travel and subsistence.
600 - The maximal number of CAO points that can be achieved by a Leaving Certificate students, though this can be increased to 640 in the case of students entering the University of Limerick which awards up to 40 bonus points for Higher Level Maths.
136 – The number of students who reached that maximal score last year. Just one of them managed to get 9 A1 grades at higher level subjects – an achievement only ever managed by a handful of people.
0 - The number of worlds which will end if the exams don’t go the way candidates would have hoped. At the end of the day, an exam is just an exam – nothing more. The best of luck to all candidates.
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