Dublin:The school is quiet. A group of boys lean on the railings that run around the grounds, laughing and talking among themselves. There is an edginess to their demeanour but any other signs of nerves are understated.
St Aidan's CBS in Whitehall, Dublin, will distribute the Leaving Cert results at 9.45am and not a minute before. Some of the boys, like Darren Kavanagh, were here at 9am. "I'll be nervous going home," he says, but then he shakes his head. "Nah, I should be grand."
The group has become a crowd and the boys are waiting outside the school door. At exactly 9.45am, principal James Reynolds unlocks the door and welcomes the boys who form a line outside his office.
Meanwhile, down the road in the Dominican College, Griffith Avenue, the first groups of girls begin to trickle in.
"It has been a very, very solid year," says Sr Chanel O'Reilly, the school principal, who is standing by a table stacked with white results envelopes. "I think that overall they will be very pleased indeed."
Back in St Aidan's, the first few boys to come out of the office turn their backs to the waiting queue and open their results immediately. Exclamations of "An A in history!" "Oh my God I passed maths!" "I can't believe this!" echo around.
Darren Kavanagh proclaims himself "delighted" and joins a group of students who are huddled around a chart detailing the CAO points for each grade. Phones come out as the results are tallied.
John Smyth is hoping to study psychology at NUI Maynooth. He looks positively ill as the results trickle out. Later his face is difficult to read. "410," he says with a laugh. "I sort of feel sick now. I'm over the moon. I really wanted more than 400 to beat my brother."
In the Dominican College, the first few results have been handed out and groups of girls stand around comparing their pieces of paper. Faces show a mixture of happiness, disbelief and no small measure of trauma.
Rachel Dunne opens her envelope almost immediately. Tension breaks into surprise. "What? Oh my God!" A fleeting moment of joy, "I've a calculator, hold on. Oh my God, oh my God!" and then concentration as she calculates her total. "550! I am so shocked!" Plenty then, to get her first choice of primary school teaching.
Anne-Marie McMahon is happy with her results. She missed her first choice of event management, but a small side-step into hospitality management and tourism will suit just as well.
It's a nervous wait for parents who keep a discreet distance in their cars. "She was never as nervous going to school as she was today, even on her very first day," says Micheál Holmes as he and his wife Dympna wait nervously.
Their faces fall as a red-eyed Bairbre comes out but their sympathetic expressions soon turn to joy as the tears turn out to have been of shock at the 540 points that confirm her place at TCD.