IF THE PREDICTIVE GRADES WERE IN MY DAY... NO COLLEGE

PROF JOHN CROWN

If Leaving Cert had been cancelled ’74 and replaced by class work I would not be a doctor and probably not a graduate. We have 55k candidates, 60k teachers 700 schools. We can’t organise multiple small sittings? Rationalise 2-paper exams into 1? Televisual orals?

DR. DOIREANN O’LEARY

My teachers didn’t like me. I didn’t like them. They told me I wasn’t intelligent enough to do medicine & to stop trying. I knew my own ability so I ignored them, studied on my own & got the points I knew I was capable of. Feeling sorry for any students in the same boat I was in.

DR. SINEAD KANE

Teachers had their favs & I was not one! Teachers questioned me was I sure I wanted to go to college given the pressure & my disability. TWO phds later, solicitor & mediator. YES I wanted to go to college. Hope same atitude doesn’t fall upon students.

DUNCAN CASEY

I failed maths for pretty much the whole year in 6th year. Failed the mocks. Spectacularly. I needed a B to get into a course in England. I got it. I wouldn’t have gotten it with predictive grades, I can tell you. Really feel for people in a similar boat.

MARGARET E. WARD

Our daughter devastated. Very hard worker... treated it like a marathon. Studied strategically every day and was improving over time towards her goal. Very unfair to disciplined kids like her and the ‘last minute merchants’

JIM KENNEDY

I would never have gotten into college on predicted grades. Coasted all year then hit the books for a month at the end. Same technique got me through college, in the pre-continuous-assessment days.