In a message addressed to the students of his diocese sitting Leaving Certificate and Junior Certificate examinations, the bishop of Ferns has reminded young people to remember that their true value lies in who they are themselves and that they “should see the exams as but one measure of their talents and their abilities - an important measure - but not the only one, nor indeed the most important one.” Bishop Denis Brennan said that the students of the diocese were “very much in the thoughts and prayers of all at this time, most especially their parents, their teachers, their priests, their fellow parishioners and the wider community.”
He called for prayers to be said in all the churches of the dioceses at the weekend and throughout the month of June.
Bishop Brennan offered the students a prayer to help them with their exams:
“O God of Wisdom, I thank you for the knowledge gained and the learning experiences I have received these past number of years.
I come to you this day and I ask you to illuminate my mind and heart.
Let your Holy Spirit be with me as I prepare for exams, guiding my studies, and giving me insight so that I can perform to the best of my ability.
Please grant me the strength to handle the pressure of these final days, the confidence to feel secure in my knowledge, and the ability to keep an appropriate perspective through it all.
Help me to keep in mind what is truly important, even as I focus my time and energy on these tests in the immediate future.
Finally, may I sense your peace in knowing that I applied myself to the challenges of this day.
I ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
More than 53,000 Leaving Certificate candidates are sitting the exams today using the new timetable, which is designed to be more student friendly.
Subjects which require huge amounts of writing, like English, are now spread over two days.
The change in order of subjects taken over the first week of exams was introduced by former Education Minister Mary Hanafin to ease the pressure during the early days of the Leaving Cert.
The numbers choosing the Leaving Certificate Applied programme this year is 3,475, up almost 10 per cent on last year.
57,006 younger students, begin the Junior Certificate, almost 900 less than last year.
More than double the number of students will take some of the 15 non-curricular language subjects on offer for this year’s Leaving Cert compared with last year, reflecting the increasingly diverse school population.
These include Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Latvian, Portuguese and Dutch.
The exam in Religious Education, which was introduced as an exam subject for Junior Cert in 2003 and for Leaving Cert in 2005, will be held on Thursday 19th June.
The last Leaving Cert papers will be taken on Friday, June 20, the day after the final Junior Cert exams.
The results come out on 13th August 2008.
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