A Leaving Certificate student is planning to isolate before her exams after it was decided there would be no hybrid model this year.
In 2020 and 2021, students were facilitated by the Department of Education regarding their exams but this year, there will only be an exam-only option for Leaving Certificate students.
Caitlin Galligan is a sixth year student, who along with her peers, has suffered during her time in the Leaving Cert system since the pandemic began.
She told Dublin Live: “I think we missed 17 weeks in fifth year last year because of lockdown. I don’t think it’s fair that we don’t get the option of predicted grades.
“I haven’t been out for the simple reason being that I can’t miss school, if you’re out you miss a lot of classwork.
“You’re not getting the guidance from the teacher, you’re just getting the notes and you’ve to catch up yourself. It's hard with subjects like maths where it’s difficult to teach yourself. I’ve already said that I’d consider isolating a week or two before the exams.
“Lockdown definitely affected us along with elderly teachers not knowing how to use laptops. We had some online classes and one of the teachers couldn’t work a laptop so we didn’t have any classes with him.
“When we got back to school, between teachers being close contacts, I had three or four teachers out which didn’t help and I’d basically free classes with no work given.
“With limited people in the class too, we weren’t able to go ahead with our work because the teacher made us wait until they came back to school.”
Caitlin, along with all the other sixth year students in the country are confused and disappointed with the government regarding their decision.
The 18-year-old said: “Predicted grades would make me less stressed in the sense that last year's students had inflated grades, but if we’re trying to get into college along with them, I don’t think it’s very fair.
“Also knowing that you have Covid on the day, you have the back-up option of predicted grades but now we don’t know what we’re going to do.
“We might get the option to sit the exam on a later date but then that’ll affect our college. Even worrying about getting Covid is stressful along with the exam pressure as well.”
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