Minister's reaction:Minister for Education Mary Hanafin has said she will reassess the examination of some new languages at Leaving Certificate level after students achieved remarkably high results yesterday.
Some 254 students sat examinations in 15 non-curricular languages this year including Russian, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovakian and Lithuanian.
All of those taking Russian received honours as did 90 per cent of those sitting Polish and Romanian. The honours rate averaged 89 per cent, while for curricular languages including German and French, the rate was 67 per cent.
Students may opt to take one of the non-curricular languages, which do not appear as part of the normal school curriculum, if they meet certain criteria, including the necessity to speak the language as a mother tongue. They must also take Leaving Cert English. The model for the papers is based on the first foreign language final written paper of the European Baccalaureate.
At her own alma mater, Presentation Secondary School in Thurles, Co Tipperary, the Minister said yesterday she would be reviewing the standard of all non-curricular language examinations.
"I want to make sure that the standard is the same," she said. "100 per cent of the students that did Russian got an honour. That wouldn't happen with 100 per cent of the students doing English, so I think we need to look at the paper."
She rejected suggestions that the entire Leaving Cert had been "dumbed down". She said that students were working "a lot more diligently".
"There is a lot of competition between them, the majority of them now go on to higher education and they are all competing for the high points courses," she said. "They are working extremely hard and they are very committed to what they are doing."
Seventy students at the Thurles school received their results yesterday. The traditionally high-achieving, all-girls school could boast that not a single student failed any subject in their exams.
Unfazed by the presence of the Minister, the girls huddled in knots, sharing their results with friends and phoning family on their mobiles.
There were few tears, with most students pleased to have achieved the points they needed.