LEAVING Cert Applied Co-ordinators must be delighted that the uncertainty of the past six weeks has ended. The Public Service Executive Union has agreed to "ring fence" its industrial action to unblock assessments for the LCA exam.

Alice Prendergast, TUI President, has welcomed the PSEU decision to lift its industrial action and says the TUI supports the PSEU case for appropriate staffing to deal with the increased workload in the Department's offices in Athlone.

More than 3,000 Leaving Cert Applied students have had their task-work assessments blocked since late January because of the dispute. PSEU assistant general secretary, Billy Hannigan, said on Friday its members had agreed to "free up" the assessments in response to concerns expressed by students, teachers and parents.

Sean Mitchell, President of the National Parents Council post-primary, welcomes the lifting of industrial action on Leaving Cert Applied examinations by the union. The LCA was designed for students who are not adequately catered for by the other Leaving Cert programmes. Its modular approach suits students who might otherwise be at risk of becoming early school-leavers.

Early last week, Margaret Dennehy LCA teacher at Ard Scoil na nDeise, in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, said projects completed by her 33 students had yet to be assessed.

Staff and students were under tremendous pressure to get the tasks completed on time. The school is piloting the LCA and Dennehy says that, with the uncertainty, it was not going to be easy to promote the programme to incoming fifth years.

Students had to complete nine tasks over the two years of the LCA. Three were due to be assessed six weeks ago while a further task is to be completed in the last session and assessed in May, says Dennehy. Each task represents 10 hours work on the part of a student, as well as time spent writing up a report, she explains.

"I feel very strongly that if these students had been traditional Leaving Cert students there would have been more publicity and more effort to bring negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion," says Dennehy.

Aideen Quinlan, a sixth year student, says that she was enjoying the programme but "the whole class is very frustrated at the moment. We feel it's very unfair." She is due to sit exams in Irish, English and communications, health education, office and retail distribution, hotel, catering and tourism and maths. She sat French last year.

A fifth year student, Carol Dalton, says that she dropped out of school for three years but has returned to do the LCA. The programme has helped build her confidence, she says. Carol says she would love to know how she has performed in the tasks - she has not had any tasks assessed yet.