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AS SOME 116,845 Junior and Leaving Certificate students prepare for their first day of exams this morning we thought some soothing numbers might ease their stress about the English papers.
The 53,749 Leaving Certificate students, 2,853 Leaving Certificate Applied students and 60,243 Junior Certificate students will have these figures, provided by the State Examinations Commission, to contend with over the next two weeks:
13 – That’s how many days the exams will last, with Junior Certificate Students finishing a day earlier.
6,000 – The total number of examiners.
3.1 million – The amount of examination papers in boxes across the country right now.
38 million – The staggering number of A4 pages in those 3.1 million exam papers. A gold star to the person who can tell us how tall the paper tower would be if we piled them all up…
105 - The total number of curricular and non-curricular subjects.
15 – The number of non-curricular language subjects including Dutch, Ancient Greek and Bulgarian.
80,465 – The amount of oral tests that will take place over the next fortnight.
1.9 million – The number of test items including scripts, art and craftwork pieces, practical materials like wood, journals and portfolios.
1 million – The amount of individual grades that will be generated.
12,679 - That’s how many appeals the Examinations Commission is expecting.
14 August – The date Leaving Certificate students will get their results. Junior Certificate students will have to wait until mid-September.
If you’re taking the exams today, all of us here at TheJournal.ie wish you the best of luck.
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For all of those who are doing exams. Look up for inspiration look down in desperation and look left and right for information. Good Luck.
38,000,000 sheets of paper at 0.1mm each: 3,800,000mm
1,000mm in a metre, thus: 3,800m or 3.8km tall.
You’re welcome.
But you forgot that the A4 booklets are bound in a much thicker layer.
It’s too early for this!!!!!
You stole my moment by 2 minutes!
Slightly worrying to think that the questions will be easier than that on the foundation level papers…
You’re right! OMG.
Ok, so 3,100,000 papers bound front and back by thicker, say 0.15mm paper, that’s 6,200,000 pages at 0.15mm thickness.
38,000,000 – 6,200,000 gives 31,200,000 pages of 0.1mm thickness.
Presume that there’s a 0.5mm space between the pages too.
Summed up, that’s: 930,00mm for the front and back pages, 3,120,000mm for the rest, and the gap is 19,000,000mm.
That’s a total of 23,050,000mm, or 23,050m or 23.05km. For those of us who did the LC in old money, that’s 907,480″, 75,623′, 25,207yards or 14.3miles. All covered?
Sorry David! :-P
Bugger, I messed up – should’ve been a 0.05mm gap between the pages! Gah! I failed! Nooooooo!
Its okay, you wrote your exam number so you get 5% anyway!
I don’t know why I started this, my head hurts. WanderArch, I’m giving you two gold stars for effort :)
@ Wanderarch: well done! My brain got fried just reading through your numbers!
But as they would be in a pile it wouldnt make much of a difference because the weight of them in a pile would compress them ;)
Once upon a time I thought life couldn’t get any harder than the leaving cert :D
I wonder what result I would get, now that I am older and wiser
For those sitting the exams just remember they are not the end of the world, just try your best its all you can do, when one door closes and all that………
Aren’t all the oral exams over since Easter?
Listening? Aural exams maybe?
Speaking = oral
I know that, but they’ve been done for weeks now! Where the aural exams are combined with the written.
Good luck to all sitting their Leaving Certificate today. Hope their immediate prospects are brighter than those of my class in the 1950s. Out of a class of 31 I believe 20 of us headed for Holyhead within a week.
And 1 bored 5th year waiting to either make a cup of coffee or escort someone to the toilet!
Lets not talk about the weather or the lions match!!
lol remember going to the toilet and being asked by the person escorting me “dya need any help, I’m good at religion”
I was thinking of charging people for an oul glimpse at the book on the way down! ;)
I ask friends and family to watch thoese doing exams for depression and severe anxiety as we don’t want any suicides which unfortunately is a risk at exam time and after.
Best of luck to all .
“Virtually any school activity that subjects children to pressure or makes them feel uncomfortable is now diagnosed as the potential cause of a mental health problem” Frank Furedi
Furedi debunks the idea of “examination syndrome” in his book “Wasted” where he explains it is the result of an “addiction to diagnosing young people’s anxious response to the trials of life.” For the vast majority of students, including those with “mental health problems”, examinations are a stressful time, but also a time when they can enjoy using their brains to the max and hopefully reaping the rewards of their hard work.
While suicide is at a scandalously high level among our young people, I don’t think we can blame the State Exams Commission. Exams are stressful (a stress exacerbated by dumbing-down and consequent unrealistic expectations by parents and students) but I’m unaware of any increased risk of suicide at this time of year, or in August/September.
I ask friends and family to remember that anxiety is catching, but so are optimism, hope and calm.
This kind of exam system pointless and outdated – as alternative education systems in other countries with better outcomes clearly show – students DO find it stressful (as government consultation with 14,000 Irish adolescents showed – they score school and exams as the two categories that are by far the biggest stressors in their lives) – hopefully we are on the way to changing our school system to be more like others that value student happiness and freedom from stress over all else, and student-led learning, such as the Finnish system, which as we all know has the best results in the world. My mother’s generation was of the opinion that pointless stress was character-forming too!!!
I agree btw that emotional and mental resilience are vital skills to be learned – and that is exactly what more enlightened new education curricula and pedagogy seek to facilitate.
Don’t forget the dozens of ‘experts’ rolled out to advise on best methods etc.
The country would come to a standstill if it wasn’t for those experts!
That explains the good weather!
Height of tower if all 38 million pieces of paper were stacked up = 0.1mm X 38,000,000 = 3,800,000mm
3,800,000mm = 3,800m
3,800m = 3.8km in height
:-)
Utterly pointless – I hope the students don’t take it too seriously, because nobody looking at their future CV will!!! And by the time they do the Leaving Cert it will be changed to have less emphasis on rote learning and more on critical thinking, student-led work and ongoing assessment – in other words, nothing that the Junior Cert will in any way prepare them for – seems cruel to put these last few years’ of students through such a pointless stress…
Only nit picking really but Ancient Greek is curricular and Modern Greek isn’t!
46,000cm high.
1 sheet of paper = 0.012 cm
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