Leaving Certificate exams could ‘potentially’ begin on July 29, Minister for Education confirms

The Leaving Certificate could “potentially” begin on July 29, the Minister for Education has said.

Fine Gael TD Joe McHugh said that a final date would be confirmed in a couple of days.

Speaking on an Instagram Live chat with Spunout.ie, Minister McHugh said: “We’re going to be looking at the traditional day of starting on a Wednesday.

“Students and teachers will be able to deduct that since we’re looking at the last week in July, we’re looking at potentially the 29th of July, and I will confirm that in a couple of days’ time.”

“The reason I don’t want to be unilaterally announcing dates or decisions is because we have a very good working forum now with all the education partners and a very good group representing young people, the Irish Secondary Students’ Union, and they’ve been at the heart of deliberations.

“They put forward a number of suggestions last Friday, very pertinent questions that they’re asking, and we’re going to work through that.”

The Minister also addressed the proposed solution of using predicted grades to decide Leaving Certificate results.

He said: “The Department have considered everything. They’re looking at everything, they’re looking at all contingencies.

But I added: “There are so many issues with predicted grading.

“Because we don’t have a standardized continuous assessment system we felt that fairness would not have been at the heart of it.”

Minister McHugh explained that he felt there was “too much inherent bias” in predicted grades, saying that some teachers may be “hard markers”.