The Finance Minister says making a call on the leaving cert exams in the coming weeks would be inappropriate.
The Labour Party has called for a decision on whether they can go ahead by the 1st of February, as the UK has already decided to cancel it’s state exams.
It comes as Government performed a U-turn on the decision to bring leaving cert and special needs students back to school from Monday.
Minister Paschal Donohoe says a decision on the exams needs to be approached carefully.
“The idea that we can make a decision about a hugely important exam like the leaving cert and indeed also the junior cert very quickly and something at speed is something that I don’t believe is inappropriate” said Minister Donohoe.
“We have a number of months left to go before we get to the leaving cert and we need to approach this in a calm and a judicious manner”.
Meanwhile more than 23,000 people have signed a petition calling for predicted grades to be an option for Leaving Cert students this year.
Those behind the call say students shouldn’t be expected to sit a normal exam when nothing about this year has been normal.
They say predictive grades should be issued in the spring so that pupils who wish to resit exam can do so later in the year.
The petition states that this would give all students who wish to attend college the chance to do so.
“Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe Attends The Launch Of Tourism Ireland’s 2015 Marketing Campaign.- Ref-100158” by infomatique is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
