John Nolan is in the middle of his Leaving Certificate exams at Carrickon-Suir CBS in Co Tipperary. Last Easter he was staying with a student from Ballymena Academy, Co Antrim, as part of an exchange between the two schools which has been taking place every year since 1980, making it one of the earliest cross-Border school exchanges.

He would like to study science at UCD and, as a member of Waterford FC's youth squad, also hopes to gain a soccer scholarship there. If not he will go to Waterford Institute of Technology to study business and leisure studies.

His impression was of "major differences" between his small 300-pupil secondary school and the much larger Northern school, both educationally and socially.

"Our school would have fitted into the corner of theirs," he says. "Their facilities were excellent, more like a university than a school." He remarks on the canteen, the large and comfortable general purpose area - where the Northern students staged a very professional fashion show - and a gymnasium with specialised PE teachers, unheard of in his school.

Like Siobhan McLornan, he was particularly struck by the fact that while Southerners were doing seven Leaving Certificate subjects, most of the Northerners had to cope with only three A-levels. "Theirs is a better system. I might have to spend a lot of time doing subjects I don't like, whereas if I had a choice of only three, I would do them much better," he says.

When pressed, he agrees that in this multi-skilled world, the Republic's system might make more sense, "but from the student's point of view, it's a lot harder in the South".

He felt that the Northern students' relationships with their teachers were more relaxed, "although there needs to be a line, or they could lose respect for them".

However he and his classmates were even more struck by the social differences between students in his small Munster town and their counterparts in one of the North's largest schools and most prosperous urban areas.

They were amazed that there was a special sixth-form car-park in Ballymena, and that the Northerners took them to a disco full of 3,000 fellow-students on a midweek night. "They lead a very easy-going lifestyle - socialising comes first." He also thought the Northern students considered themselves more mature and, in general, had "a high opinion of themselves".