Subject to public health advice, the State Examinations examinations will commence on Monday 16th November and will run each evening and at weekends over a four-week period to Friday 11th December 2020.
The examinations are scheduled for evenings and at weekends with candidates sitting their examination(s) in the school where they had been entered or scheduled to sit the examinations in June 2020.
As you are aware, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Leaving Certificate candidates were offered the option of receiving Calculated Grades and/or sitting Leaving Certificate written examinations at a later date when it was considered safe to do so. Leaving Certificate candidates who are not satisfied with their Calculated Grades, including those who have appealed their Calculated Grade/s or who were not in a position to receive a Calculated Grade, may opt to sit written examinations. The examinations are also open to candidates who opted not to receive Calculated Grades.
Those students who received Calculated Grades and who now sit Leaving Certificate 2020 will be credited with the higher subject grade achieved between the Calculated Grade and the written examination.
Timetables
The examinations will commence on Monday, 16th November 2020 and will take place over a 4- week period to Friday, 11th December 2020 in the case of the Leaving Certificate in order to accommodate each of the June examination sessions, along with LCVP and the two papers in
Computer Science which had been scheduled for May. The LCA examinations, including the LCA ICT Specialism examination, conclude on 28th November and the Junior Cycle examinations on 30th November. The timetables are being published on the SEC website www.examinations.ie.
The examinations will take place with one examination session on weekday evenings and two examination sessions on each day of the weekends.
The examinations are scheduled to start at 5.30 pm each weekday evening, and at 9:30 am and 2 pm at the weekends.
It is intended that candidates will take the examinations in their own school, i.e. the school in which they were entered for or scheduled to sit the June 2020 examinations. Candidates will be required to attend at the school 15 minutes before the start of each examination and to sign an attendance/centre roll to confirm their attendance and for contact tracing purposes. Candidates will be required to bring photographic ID to each examination session.
Junior Cycle
On the 29th of April 2020, the Minister for Education and Skills announced the decision, arising from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, to cancel the 2020 Junior Cycle examinations. The Minister stated that all third-year Junior Cycle students would receive a school-based report of their learning, as well as a state certificate recognising their work and achievement at Junior Cycle.
It was also announced at the time that the SEC would put in place specific arrangements for adult learners to give them an opportunity to take final Junior Cycle examinations for which they were entered and would, in the normal course of events, have sat in June 2020. The SEC will directly contact the schools/centres which had entries under this category.
On 26 August the Minister for Education, Norma Foley TD, in announcing that the Junior Cycle written examinations for adult learners would take place in November 2020, also announced that these November written examinations would now be offered to early school leavers, who had been registered to sit the June examinations and who had left school after Junior Cycle 2020 and were not continuing in an educational pathway that would lead to formal certification.
How to Apply to sit Examinations
In the case of the Leaving Certificate, candidates who wish to sit an examination (s) in November, will be given the opportunity to apply through the Candidate Portal used for the Calculated Grades process, which will open at 9 am on Monday 28th September and close at 5 pm on Friday 2nd October. LCA Year 2 candidates will be asked to contact SEC directly using the dedicated email address LCA2020exams@examinations.ie if they wish to sit an examination(s).
Examination FeeThere will be no fees charged for sitting these examinations.
Reasonable Accommodation(s)
Candidates who have been approved the use of reasonable accommodation(s) for the June examinations will have access to this resource in November, eg a spelling and grammar waiver, or access to a reader, scribe or special centre. It is not possible to approve new applications for reasonable accommodation in any other circumstances, other than the normal emergency application process which applies each year. SEC
will issue further instructions in this regard closer to the examinations.
Examination Centres
The SEC will assign candidates to take their examinations in their own school and not to an individual centre within the school. This is to allow school authorities maximum flexibility in terms of the actual management of the examinations at school level.