Another Day

Not much for photos again but this little bird lives inside the IT building. He spends most of his time near the food court. He walks with a limp so this is probably his best chance of survival.  Cristopher had another good day at camp and Dave...... worked. If you are not an educator the next section may not be for you:-) Maybe even if you are an educator;-)

The church
Today we visited St. Marys Secondary School for boys. There are 11 high schools in Galway, 5 are coed, 2 are boys schools and 4 are girls schools. 93% of the schools in Ireland have a Catholic ethos. All teachers in Ireland are paid by the central department of education, and are licensed by the department, but they are hired by the management (local board). Each board is made up of a minimum of (2 parents, 1 principal, 3 members of the ethos). The three additional members are usually the priest from the parish where the school is housed and two other church representatives. So education is free in Ireland and paid for by the central government even though most schools are Catholic. There is a long historical reason for this but I will save that story for another time. All denominations are welcome to attend and are excused from the half an hour of religious education that is taught each day as part of the curriculum. The entire country acts as one school district.

Assessment
There are two major exams. The first exam takes place at the end of 9th grade and is called the Junior Cert. The second exam happens at the end of the last year (grade 11) and is called the Leavings. Students best 6 scores on many different subjects are added together. There is an honors level and an ordinary level exam. Students pick from 1300 courses of study and order their preference for college study. If they get the right score then they get their first choice if not it goes down from there. So if you pick medicine, then teaching then bio chemistry and you score a total of 550 and medicine requires a 590, teaching requires a 440 and chemistry requires a 530 then you would go to school for teaching. So students have to choose wisely because once you are in there is no switching. The only way to change is to drop out and wait until the following year to re list your choices.