Fresh from the trauma of attempting to manage schools in a climate of controlled chaos, principals are once more expressing their utter frustration at attempting to impose order and calm in the face of the turmoil visited on the schools by the structure of the examinations system.

Surely the time has come for the entire education community to act on the shared conviction that you cannot operate productive schooling and oral and practical examinations simultaneously.

All parties agree that normal school life is seriously disrupted by these examinations: - Students' minds and hearts are necessarily focused on the trial ahead. Most students find the individual oral test quite a traumatic prospect. Their time is spent in preparing and practising right up to the minute and then the necessary wind-down follows. - Orals currently stretch across whole weeks in school and empathising with and supporting "the pals" is an important element. Who can give their attention to other subjects in such stressful circumstances? The net cost to the examination students is the loss of two solid weeks of schooling at a critical time. - Apart from this loss, much has been written about the loss of other students who are not taking examinations, when their teachers are necessarily absent on examination duty. The feasibility of engaging substitute teachers with equivalent qualifications and experience is slight - never mind the essential adjustment by the temporary "babysitters". - "School Climate" is at issue. Principals will speak of that orderly ambience required to produce good quality learning and calmness and confidence for the written examinations. A stop/ start atmosphere is certainly not helpful, particularly when the sun starts to shine and beckons students to distraction.

A plethora of manageable and cost-effective solutions has been presented to the Department of Education and Science annually by all parties. Despite courteous consideration and polite acknowledgements no steps have been taken to reduce the unwarranted and unacceptable erosion of school time.

The new programmes at Junior and at Leaving Certificate, which are ready for implementation, will provide for an enormous increment in practical and oral examinations. These are entirely meritorious and welcome. No educator will decry the value of such additional modes of assessment. They must, however, be structured in a new way and at a new time.

This thorn, in spite of all the massive administrative burdens of the Examinations Branch, which we readily acknowledge, must be grasped now. No system can safely ignore this level of disruption and still produce a quality service. School principals once more demand a review of this process so that we can finally put these old chestnuts into terminal storage.

Jean Geoghegan, principal of Christ King Girls' School, Cork and PRO of the Secondary Schools Principals' Association of Ireland (SSPAI).