New system will benefit some more than others
THE parents of Wexford children who were due to sit their Leaving Cert this summer have criticised the government for reneging on their promise to hold the exams by ‘hook or by crook’.
Following Minister for Education Joe McHugh’s announcement that this year’s exams would not go ahead as scheduled and that students would instead have their grades calculated by teachers, Tanya Fenelon, whose son Liam attends Bridgetown College, spoke of her disappointment.
‘The way the government has done it has been very unfair, they haven’t consulted the schools or the students at all,’ she said. ‘Liam is disappointed, he think it suits some students a lot more than others.’
And she believes the exams could, and should, have gone ahead.
‘If we’re opening the country on July 20 why can’t we allow students to sit in exam halls? If pubs are going to be open in August, why can’t students be in exam halls? ‘They’re more likely to social distance than drunk people. There’s 50 classrooms in that school, they could have put three students in each room easily,’ she says.
Hoping to study History at the University of Limerick (UL) and to eventually return to Bridgetown College to teach, Liam must now put his future in the hands of his teachers who, according to Tanya, have gone the extra mile to ensure their students are coping during the lockdown.
‘The school have been fantastic, they’ve put on extra classes at their own expense. They’ve been in constant communication with the students, replying to emails as soon as they’re sent, phoning the kids to make sure they’re okay, checking on their wellbeing,’ she says.
Yet, alongside every other school in the county, Bridgetown College has had to play a guessing game when its come to the likely outcome of this year’s exams.
‘There’s been too much political point-scoring over this. I should be hearing the latest developments from the school not from RTÉ. The first I heard of this was on the news at nine last night and I had to ring Liam to tell him about it then,’ said the concerned mother.
In addition to missing out on his exams, the closure of the school meant Liam hasn’t had the opportunity to complete a rather unique record of his own.
‘He hasn’t missed a single day during his six years of school and has received a cert at the end of each year to commemmorate that, he wants to make sure he gets that cert for this year too,’ Tanya said.
Colin Gibbon’s daughter was similarly committed to sitting her exams, and was left ‘devastated’ by the news which emerged last Thursday evening.
And the Foulksmills man said it was made all the worse by the previous promises issued by the Taoiseach.
‘We were told last month that the Leaving Cert was going ahead by “hook or by crook” and we were given a date, and then that date was reaffirmed,’ Colin says.
‘In an uncertain world it was making at least one thing certain for the students. The department made it very clear it was going ahead and now it’s not.’
Studying up to 10 hours a day for the past two years, Colin’s daughter had been hoping to study Medicine in Cork and Galway, committing to a path which now no longer exists.
‘She was devastated when she heard the news, she had been committed to a path all the way through and now that’s been taken away, the goalposts were there and she was aiming for them,’ Colin says.
‘It’s particularly difficult for students who had committed themselves to a path and had it laid out in front of them, some children will do better out of this than they would have, others will do worse.’
And like Tanya, Colin is at a loss as to why the exams could not have been as originally scheduled in late July.
‘The exams could have been held, there are lots of big spaces which aren’t being used. They didn’t even have to be in the schools, they could have held them in CIT or in other colleges.
‘Surely when they announced the date of July 29 they had a plan in place? Our progress since then (with the virus) has been better than predicted, so why has it been changed? What was their plan originally?’
The impact of this announcement will only become apparent over time, but Colin believes the class of 2020 have been dealt a particularly bad hand.
‘I don’t think there’s a Leaving Cert student in the country at the moment who hasn’t been stressed over one thing or another. It’s always stressful to exit school and to do so at a time when we’ve been told we’re heading into one of the biggest recessions in years will make it even harder for them.’