State Exams kick off this morning for more than 4,000 local students.
It’ll all be wrapped up by the 28th of June but the next three weeks will feel like some of the most important and stressful of many young local school childrens lives so far.
4,323 students in total will be sitting state exams in Carlow and Kilkenny, all starting with English at 9.30am
This year marks the full return of externally delivered and marked examinations for all candidates after the disruption of the pandemic and the hybrid models that were used for the Leaving Certificate.
2013 students will sit the leaving this year in Carlow and Kilkenny, including 86 doing the applied course, with exams spread out over 15 days.
The Junior Cert schedule is a bit shorter this year for 2224 local teenagers. Their exams are over nine days and finishing on Monday the 20th of June.
Sue Nunn spoke with Gemma Lawlor, who is a Guidence Counsellor with more than two decades experience at Tyndal College in Carlow on The Way It Is. Giving some advice to students she says: “Realise that the person you are writing to in your exam paper wants to give you as many marks as they can. If you take that attitude of positivity and kind of relationship that I want to get across to this person as much as I can and really really try communicate to them as a person while answering the question you were asked obviously and realising that they want to give you the marks, then that should set you in a more positive frame of mind.”
You can listen back to Gemma’s full interview with Sue here.