Dear parent/guardian,
I hope you and your family are keeping safe and well.
This is a strange time for everyone and I would like to thank you for your support in the past week as we have worked to ensure all staff and students have adequate access to online learning. Thank you, too, for ensuring your son continues to engage with his teachers and his learning online. In monitoring student engagement, we have noticed that some students are more active than others, so please could you check that your son has all he needs to be able to access this learning. If there are any problems, please do let us know. We are asking the boys to follow their usual timetable throughout the day so that they can keep on top of their learning. Teachers are available to answer any questions or clarify any misunderstanding with their classes. They will be in touch if they have noticed your son not engaging with the work he is set.
If your child usually receives support for an Additional Educational Need and you have any concerns, please feel free to contact the school on info@templeoguecollege.ie where we will be able to provide you with email contact details for Mrs Finney and Mr O’Sullivan who will be happy to respond to you. All teachers who teach resource classes are planning lessons for their students to complete and they will keep in regular contact with students in their learning support groups through Teams/email.
Leaving and Junior Certificate Exams
You may have heard on the news this morning that the government has announced that all Leaving Certificate Oral exams have been cancelled for Irish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Japanese. Instead, all candidates will be awarded full marks (100%) for this aspect of the exam. Awarding full marks was considered to be the most fair to candidates as it guarantees that no candidate can be awarded a mark lower than they would have achieved in the test. No other approach to generating a result for these components would have given this guarantee. These decisions have at all time been guided by consideration of the best interests of candidates.
In addition, practical exams in music for both Junior and Leaving Certificate have been cancelled. Again, candidates will be awarded full marks for this aspect of the exam. I know, however, that Mr Duff would still like your son to keep practising! This is good for maintaining positive mental health and it will also be important should we be able to proceed with our Horgan Concert this summer.
With regards to Art, the deadline for submission of projects has been extended to May 15th. Mr O’Sullivan will update his classes directly with any updates on this as this work can only happen in the classroom.
The deadline for any Classroom Based Assessments or practical work 3rd year students were completing has also been extended to May 15th.
We are expecting that the State Examinations Commission will provide further details in the coming days and I will keep you posted on this. In the meantime, the advice to candidates is that they should continue to prepare for the remaining elements of their examinations as scheduled.
Please take care of you and your families and let us know if we can do anything to help.
With warm wishes,
Niamh Quinn