State exams continue with Engineering, English and Irish
THE STATE EXAMINATIONS enter their second day today as Junior Cert students spend the day taking Irish papers of various grades, while Leaving Cert students tackle the second English paper and Engineering.
Over 115,000 people began the exams yesterday, as Junior Certificate students got their English papers out of the way while the Leaving Cert exams also began with English and Home Economics.
The Leaving Cert English paper I met with mixed reactions from students, as the general theme of ‘mystery’ hampered some students taking the Honours paper.
The popular short story option of the essay segment – which accounts for half of the marks on the Higher Level paper I – required students to discuss how a mystery was solved, an option found by some students speaking to the Irish Times.
Elsewhere in the paper, the Irish Times appeared in its own right – with students asked to analyse the characteristics of the paper’s Washington correspondent Lara Marlowe based on a 2010 column in which she discussed her love of cats.
12,000 students also took the Home Economics course, in a paper well received by students who found the questions posed to be topical and relatively straightforward.
The Irish Independent reports, meanwhile, that the special examination centre set up in Malta in order to accommodate students from a school in Tripoli in Libya remained empty yesterday when no students showed for the papers.
The State Examinations Commission had set up an exam centre in Malta to take care of 10 students who were said to have fled there, and were ready to provide for another 31 candidates who were seeking visas to travel there.
Ultimately, though, no students appeared at the centre, which will remain open today in case the students are able to make it today.