English Paper 2

05-06-2009


For those people that haven't read anything about the Leaving Cert this year there was a little slip up during the week. Apparently some moron handed out English Paper 2 on the day that English Paper 1 was being sat around the country. He spotted the mistake, collected the paper, then handed out the right one.

However some students were quick to spot the mistake and noted some of the things that were on the paper. This was then shared around the Internet like good cheating students do. But there are many things that I find hilarious about this story.

1) The Department of Education has constantly called this slip up a "Security Breach". That term to me conjures up images of men in ninja suits ab-sailing down the side of buildings, busting in through windows and stealing papers. It was an honest to God human error, plain as. Talk about hyping up something.

2) It is written on the envelope that the exams come in what date they should be handed out on. How dyslexic do you have to be to not be able to read a date? If you are working for a Government department don't you think that would be a basic skill required?

3) When the mistake was spotted the Department had to swoop into action and come up with a new plan of attack. That plan was to use backup papers (that they constantly swear they never have when a school requests them for some valid reason) so as the students wouldn't have an advantage. Except instead of just having the exam on the same day it was meant to be on they shift it to Saturday. Because apparently all the papers are not delivered to schools in one bundle or something stupid like that.

4) There are something like ten Jewish students that now can't sit the exam because of their religion. Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. So they have to be kept isolated during Saturday so that they can sit the exam later.

Talk about a mountain out of a mole hill. At best the peek that was gotten would have been brief. Worst case scenario, English results were up rather than down. But the massive debacle that the Department has made of this is scary. A Saturday exam is something that should never happen during the LC given the levels of stress applied to students. More to the point how can they not have a back up plan in place ALREADY rather than needing an emergency meeting where the best idea they come up with is to move the exam back five days.

Somehow this is all Dempsey's fault.

I don't like that man, in case you hadn't guessed.

Anyway, to all the poor students out there that got rightly shafted on this one best of luck.

Blue_jester


Tags: rant


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