The number of students taking the Leaving Cert next week has declined to its lowest level in over two decades.
But, reflecting the changing nature of Irish society, the Leaving will feature a range of exams in languages, such as Latvian and Hungarian
Some 52,000 candidates will sit the Leaving Cert which begins tomorrow week, a significant decline since more than 68,000 took the exam in 1995.
The lower number of candidates should mean less pressure on CAO points for college courses but this has not proven to be the case in recent years. This is because the number of mature, external and repeat students has tended to offset the decline in school leavers.
The exams - both Leaving and Junior Cert - represent a huge logistical task for the State Exams Commission (SEC). The Athlone-based SEC will handle and co-ordinate:
90 examination subjects;
250 different test components - oral, aural, practical, project and portfolio items as well as the written examination papers;
1.8 million individual test items;
4,600 ordinary examination centres;
4,500 special examination centres;
Three million examination papers made up of 34 million A4 pages.
This year, only 14,700 students are taking higher level Irish, some 1,300 less than the number opting for higher level French.
The most popular subject at higher level in the Leaving Cert is English (32,100 students) followed by geography (20,500) and biology (19,900).
The changes at Leaving Cert this year include revised syllabuses in history and geography which will be examined for the first time.
At Junior Certificate, the revised science syllabus will be assessed for the first time.
The history syllabus replaces the previous Leaving Certificate history syllabus, which had been in place since 1971. It also subsumes economic history, which was examined for the last time in 2005.
In the Leaving Certificate Irish examination, from 2006 onwards, there will be a change on the literature section of both higher and ordinary level papers with a new optional section involving the study of drama and film.
The list of subjects for the Leaving Certificate includes the following language subjects: Irish, English, ancient Greek, Arabic, French, German, Hebrew Studies, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Russian.
The SEC also provides examinations languages which do not appear as part of the normal school curriculum. Students can opt to be examined in these languages if, among other things, they speak it as a mother tongue or are from a member state of the EU. This year, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian and Slovakian are being examined for the first time. The Leaving Cert results will be issued on August 16h.
