GOING TO COLLEGE: This morning many Leaving Cert students who suspect that they have been short-changed by examiners will be thinking about viewing their papers (which is free).
Guidance counsellors routinely advise students to bring a subject teacher with them to the viewing. This is easier said than done. Many subject teachers are reluctant to accompany students to viewings and there is no obligation upon them to do so.
The ASTI has stated that teachers are not paid to attend viewings and that many of them are on holiday on August 29th and 30th, when the viewings will take place.
Teachers are also reluctant to view papers in subjects that were taught by their colleagues. They fear that if they view a paper with one student, the entire class will demand the same treatment.
Students must view their papers in person and they may bring one other person with them.
Ideally this should be a person who knows something about the subject and about marking because most students would be at a loss to know what went wrong, if they suspect that they were scored lower than they deserved.
If your own teachers decline your invitation to accompany you, you then have to find other teachers from outside your school.
Unless your parents have friends in teaching circles, you may be at a loss to find someone suitable. So while the system is meant to be transparent in that students get to see their papers, making sense of those marked papers is another matter entirely.
If you decide to appeal a grade, the fee is €33 per Leaving Cert subject, and €13 per Leaving Cert Vocational Programme subject.
You need to send back the appeal form with your name and examination number on it, which should have been given to you by your school.
One student called yesterday to say she had been given an appeal form with somebody else's name on it.
If this has happened to you and you want to appeal, do so by writing to the State Examinations Commission, Athlone, with your name, address, examination number and details of the examination that you are appealing.
We got many heart-breaking calls yesterday from students and parents who got good points, only to realise that they hadn't filled their CAO forms in correctly.
By looking at last year's points, which are unlikely to change much this year, students were getting a fairly reliable prediction of what they would be offered.
And some were miserable when they did their calculations, because they realised that they would be given their second choice, for example, when what they really wanted was their third choice.
There is no way out of this. If you get your second choice, you cannot move down to your third.
On your CAO form, you should rank the courses in the order that you prefer them, not in the order of points that you think they will require.
Say you got 440 points and you think, by looking at last year's figures, that you've just missed your first choice, a 460 point course at UCD.
The CAO doesn't know that when you ranked a 440-point course at UCC second, what you really wanted was the 430-point course at UCD, which you ranked third.
The CAO will give you your second choice. You cannot reject that choice in the hope that you will get your third choice in the second round.
The golden rule of the CAO is you can move up, but never down. Once you are awarded a particular choice, every course that you ranked below that choice is gone.
Institutes of Technology give degrees as well as certs and diplomas.
If you think you will not be offered a degree course in a university because you failed English or Irish, and you did not apply for a degree, a cert or diploma in an IT, it may still be worth your while contacting the IT that interests you.
If you failed the higher English paper but passed Irish, DCU, DIT and all ITs will accept English or Irish.
So keep an eye out for vacant places next week.