I am delighted to have this opportunity to greet you through the pages of Education and Living and to wish you all good luck in your examinations. No matter how hard you have worked, a small percentage of success is always attributable to that magic ingredient called "luck".

I know that the inspectors of my Department have tried very hard to set fair and balanced examination papers. I hope that in there somewhere will be at least a few of the topics and questions that you are busily preparing.

Each examination heralds a transition in your lives. Those of you who are sitting the Junior Certificate are testing yourselves for the first time against the national criterion of a public examination. It marks the end of your junior cycle in post-primary school and your movement towards early adulthood.

The Leaving Certificate is an important milestone for all those taking it. It marks your farewell to the relatively protected environment of school and your entry to third-level education or to the world of work.

Often, comment on the public examinations gives the impression that all that is tested by them is memory, that they are a test of your ability to learn and to regurgitate facts rather than of your ability to analyse those facts. I hope that this is not true and that your powers of creative thinking, very much needed in our society, will also be called into play.

I believe that many of the human qualities that are put to the test during the stressful period of the examinations will also be needed throughout your working lives. I am thinking of qualities such as perseverance, problem-solving and decision-making skills, the ability to rejoice in the success of your friends or to sympathise in their misfortune, the grace to be courteous in your behaviour towards your parents and brothers and sisters, even when under pressure yourself.

These are the qualities which schools try to nurture at all times, but especially through programmes like the Transition Year. They will be at least as important to you as a high points score as you go through life.

It gives me great satisfaction to know that the Leaving Certificate no longer consists of one single programme, but that you have a choice between the established Leaving Certificate, the Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme and the Leaving Applied. The workforce badly needs the entrepreneurial skills fostered by the LCVP.

I have every confidence that those of you who have chosen the Leaving Certificate Applied will find that it opens interesting opportunities for work or for further study. You have already accumulated significant credits over two years through the completion of key assignments and the assessment of tasks. The forthcoming written and practical tests will be the culmination of your good work over this period.

Do you know that if you had been born into the Masai tribe in Kenya, you would have had to prove your adult prowess by going out and killing a lion? Examinations may be stressful, but I think most of us would prefer them to facing up to the king of the forest.

I would urge that, having grappled with the traditional "Three Rs" for 13 or 14 years, you would, during the examinations period, attend to the alternative Three Rs - Revision, Relaxation and Realism!

Not everyone can achieve maximum points. You are emerging into adulthood at a time when there are more career opportunities in Ireland than ever before. Whatever your results, there will be an opportunity for you somewhere to lead a happy and purposeful life.

Go neiri an tadh libh go leir.

Micheal Martin, TD, Minister for Education