It's funny, you know, as we have gone on with our own lives, I think in a sense we've forgotten that there are people still kind of stuck in lockdown. And these are like texts from three months ago, people saying, my mother hasn't got a home in six months. She's in a nursing home. Is that fair? And someone else, Katherine, saying, don't forget, please, another forgotten group, the adults who have an intellectual disability living in community houses, their day centers and activities disappeared overnight last March, as did their families from their lives.

And we do not forget them. Catherine, we remember them now. Psychotherapist Sally O'Malley is still with us. But tomorrow is, of course, what we used to call leaving search results. So tomorrow is now leaving their calculator grades day. But we're joined now by I4 Walsh, whose guidance counselor at Malahide Community School ifour. Good afternoon. So 57000 students getting their results tomorrow across the country, I presume in your school will be a very different kind of results they wanted.

It's going to be an extremely different results day than we're used to. The results normally takes place in August. The teachers are on summer holidays, so the vast majority of them are there and they come in and they're available to the students. The students pick up their hard copy of their results and their celebration. And there is minding of people who are a little bit surprised, a little bit upset. Tomorrow, the students will be getting all their results online.

The students are the schools won't have a paper copy of results to hand them if they were to come up to the school. And I think schools are trying to make arrangements as much as possible to allow students to to come, but obviously trying to keep their covid restrictions in place as well. And they can congregate.

They can't control. It is exactly what they want to do from the point of coming to the school is to be with your community or your classmates and your teachers. When they do come up, their teachers are going to be teaching in class. So they may not be available to them to see the particular teacher that they want. So it's going to be a difficult and challenging day for everybody.

OK, can you explain to us how the results are calculated or 80 percent of people are going to get the grades they were awarded by their teachers, the other 20 percent? What do you understand the mechanism that has changed their results?

So the other 20 percent will be going through to the apartments scheme to make sure that there's not overly inflated or deflated grades. So there's going to be 20 percent adjustments, 79 percent of the students will get the grades at the school has issued that the Department of Ritualist and that. But then some of them will be adjusted as well. So the students who receive their grades tomorrow, that is their overall calculator. Great. On Monday the 14th, they'll be allowed to see the grade that the school has actually assigned them.

And they'll be able to see if there was a difference there between what their teachers and school have said and what the Department of Set. And for the most of the students for 80 percent, those two grades will be exactly the same.

OK, now for the ones who who aren't happy, then there is an appeals process. But it's not it's not what you might think.

Know, the appeals process is to appeal the how the data was transferred from the school to the department and then also how it was entered. So if you look at your two grades and you see that there's a big difference in them, I would highly recommend a student to appeal it because there can be administrative errors. We see that and leaving search all of the time. So if your school gave you one grade and the department gave you a very different grade, you can ask them to go back and check that all the information was passed through properly and entered properly.

But they're not going to recheck how the teacher came to that mark, how the school arrived at that mark, or how the department arrived at their version of the mark.

OK, and then if you're really not happy, you can choose to set the living standards. When is that happening?

So the Leaving CERT exams for 2020 are going to start on the 16th of November and the class of 2020 will be in a very unique position because they'll be able to look at their calculated grades and any subjects that they feel they should have done better in. And they'll be able to take exams in those subjects only if they wish to, so they can take one exam, no exams or all of their exams again. And then if they do better in some of their exams, they can use the combination of their best grades from both to be there leaving cert results for 2020 and then maybe maximize their CEO points.

OK. The reality is, though, like deciding to get back into, like, you know, those of us who did the leaving cert, you spend whatever, a few months cramming all that stuff and then you promptly forget it. You start from scratch.

Definitely isn't a decision for tomorrow either, because you're going to get your leaving their results tomorrow. But the vast majority of us are using our leaving search results to enter the school system. You'll get your CEO offer on Friday.

So it's probably a good idea, even if you are disappointed to pause and wait. See what that 04 brings before you make a decision about what you're going to do in the future.

No, in terms of the CIA or we seem to have two issues here, I guess for for the students this year that points could be. Higher than they thought they might be, and then we have that whole issue that has been blowing up all week about students from last year who are working on probably lower average results in general. Just explain the whole situation there to us.

So there is concerns from both the students of this year and students from last year that if our grades are slightly higher because they're calculated grades than they would normally be, that that's going to push up the points and we know they'll be higher.

Yeah, the points are based on supply and demand. So the more students were better results that are going for a particular course, the higher the points for that course will be. Now, they have said that they are issuing more places for the courses and they expect that this will negate the problem and that the points will remain in general the same every year. Some courses go up in huge jumps and some courses go down in huge jumps and the vast majority of courses in and around the same.

So just because your course goes off a huge amount does not mean that that necessarily was caused by the fact that you're getting calculated grades this year. But we will have to see how that plays out now over the next week when the offers come out.

OK, first, in terms of people from last year, there are actually a huge contingent of people from previous years. Is not the odd straggler here and there.

No, there there can be a very significant portion of students who choose to wait a year to enter this system. They may have done a p.l.c. course and they might be using that qualification to enter through the CEO. They may have missed out on one particular subject or particular entry requirement, or they may just be going back for points or they may have just taken a breather and are coming back now into the system if the system behaves as they wanted to, and if by adding more places the point stay the same.

Those students from last year should be really at a massive disadvantage because the points are still at the same level as they were the year before.

And so hopefully that kind of tension valve that they're releasing in the system will work.

But again, we'll have to wait and see on Friday how that goes. OK, and if it doesn't work, if it doesn't work, their points will go up. Some people will be still have enough marks and points to enter into their chosen courses and that be fantastic. But every year there are people who are disappointed.

Yeah, yeah. And unapologetic. Who is the chair of the board of the CEO has said there's going to be a problem here. And he's also said there's no way that you can some of those extra places. People were saying could they be set aside from people from the previous year? He's saying you can't know that legally.

OK, stellar from the from the psychotherapist's point of view, did the Leaving CERT students had a particularly rough deal this year? Did they?

What was hard about the covid was specific groups had such a cruel time of it. Another group had a great time and the lives that students had a horrible time. They didn't know whether they were doing it. They didn't know what they were going to be doing. They were so stressed and now they're college. Beginning is going to be awful. And this whole scenario, it does feel a bit all over the place. Now, you explained it very clearly, but it does feel like the powerlessness of it.

They can't feel like I worked hard. I did my best. What I did in June was the best I could do. And now I'll leave it to the fate of things like that at all. That's a horrible feeling psychologically that you just think, well, it's up to somebody else. Some structure and systems are either going to go well for me or not. It's kind of a lottery. I hope it goes well for me. They could be forgiven for feeling persecuted and that life isn't fair.

You've been seeing these young people. Yeah.

In the last year. Yeah. And they're very Infernus, the very, very anxious and they're real decent kids who are just thinking, I don't know where I'm going. I know what my number one is. I know my teacher in X and Y subject didn't appreciate me. I was getting grades and those subjects, I think I had it in the bag. And now that teacher is going to be giving me grades. And this is so horribly unfair.

And also the repeat, people feel that they've kind of lost out, too, because they think they think they might be wrong, but they think the grades are the points would be inflated.

But interestingly, you don't think that this is going to have a long term. Ah, you know, a lot of people are worried about what kind of problems are we storing up for kids into the future. You don't think it's going to have a huge long term effects?

I think right now we're six months into something and you could bounce back quite easily. If it goes on and goes on and goes on for another nine months of this sort of uncertainty. I think it will have a long tail. But I think there's a lot of ways to have a good career, an awful lot of ways. I didn't go to college actually after school, and a lot of people don't. And there's lots of ways to have a good career and it's not necessarily about to leave.

And this year is really going to show it's not about your leaving cert didn't do it this year. It's about being shrewd, is about picking a post, maybe a p.l.c. or picking a course that maybe wouldn't wouldn't be for you. But it's in and around your subject that you're shrewd enough to realize this is a long and it's about my career. It's not about my leave. And thought we were always on the wrong ball anyway when we were looking at the live third.

And this year it's really been exposed, you see.

Is there an opportunity? Because like you talk about the psychological damage to them and all of this like but this psychological damage of believing every year, I presume you see that Australia couldn't agree more.

Every single January, February, grey faced adolescence are coming into me, tents and in bits because of the Leaving CERT. Now, Infernus, this year they had a very different and it was a very difficult experience. But the levinsohn is brutal. It's and I know people say it's equally unfair to everybody. I just think it's a horrible example that it's really, really there are better ways to be unfair to everybody.

And I think this year, always, I'd love to see more emphasis on portfolio so that let's say teachers who are really, really want to be a prime school teacher could maybe build up a portfolio that they did training for Jiajia or they did kind of summer camps so that their experience counts are that nurses in particular, who often have really high academic points. And it's very much a personality that they had interviews. Ah, they got extra points for maybe helping the elderly during the T.Y. and stuff like that.

There's a lot of ways to skin a cat. And this idea that nurses have to reach certain points, it just doesn't seem appropriate because it's not appropriate to the career that it is.

There's lots of ways to go at it now. Do you agree?

I absolutely agree. And thankfully, there is more opportunities and more choices coming into the system every year. So, you know, as you were you're talking about the nurses example of an example that I always had was the culinary arts example, which would have really, really high points and has very little to do with academic study. Now, thankfully, you can go to culinary arts through your degree course and do it through your p.l.c. course and some further education colleges.

And you can now also introduce an apprenticeship. So the system is starting to lighten up, but it's it is too slow. It's not going quickly enough, but there will be opportunities there. If anybody is disappointed tomorrow and if anybody is disappointed on Friday, there are always opportunities there. We just need to seek them out. And if you can't contact your school guidance counselor or your teachers because of the situation, the National Parents Council and the Irish Independent have a hotline area helpline which is opening from tomorrow and will remain open until the 16th.

And so that can be a really, really good place to start for confidential advice.

Texta here wants to know, do you know if students will be able to see their class ranking?

My understanding is now they won't know. They won't be able to see that information. OK, just great. Here's another side of the story. I've been surrounded by leaving Circuit since March texta. They're not stressed out. They've been open about all summer sea beaches, parks, etc. carp on people.

They'll be grand, I think. Certainly some of them. Well, some of them will be very happy. Yeah.

Cancelling the live concert was a massive betrayal of the students as an texta that will have long term consequences. Denying that is very naive. Does it need to be cancelled, in your opinion? I mean, yeah, I.

I can't see how they would have done the exams at that time, you know, and leaving them. Go on, go on. Go. Wasn't some either. So, you know, this is probably the best situation we're in right now. But I think students need to stop thinking about the bigger picture in the systems at work and just focus on themselves right now on their own choices.

Would you be deferring a college place this year if you did get it? Like college doesn't look like exactly a bargain, does it?

I, I to be honest, I think that's a very personal decision based on what's going on in your circumstances.

But what I would say is the colleges aren't expecting to get a huge amount of referrals this year from the V.A. from early on telling people, yeah, yeah, if you take your calculator grades and you do your exams and as I said, they will take the best combination if you then are due and improve Siao offer. As a result of that new combination of grades, you will be given a CEO offer for like a twenty offer and you will start it in 2021 as if you have deferred us OK because it will be too late to start, but it will be from the 2020 offerings.

We start in 2021 as if deferred.

So are some of those people are going to go into other courses now do you reckon, while they're waiting for the leave?

If I think it comes down to how many people choose to take these November exams and if we see a lot of people choosing to take them, we could have a lot of people starting college, getting their results next January and February from the 2020 Leaving CERT and then choosing to leave to reapply to the CEO or to take that deferral offer and restart a new course in 2021.

OK, you were nodding vehemently about the deferral there.

Yeah, yeah. If it was my kids, I'd say to fair, do think laterally, do something creative, do something different, do something special because of the special and weird year. Take take that opportunity because I think it's going to be fairly grim these first few months. I've already been in touch with teenagers who started in different colleges in in Europe and stuff on America and they're saying it is fairly harsh. They're online all the time now. They are meeting friends, but they are online a lot of the time.

And I just think it's such a special oneself, what Laura was describing a fallen in love with her boyfriend that first week, and it's very special and I think differing would be, for me, a creative response to it.

You know, this guy is Scott Galloway, who's a kind of an academic in America, but much more bizarre. He's in kind of a big thinker and he's made a fortune on tech companies and all that kind of thing. Scott Galloway has an idea that we should be saying in America, instead of putting kids into college this year, that you form some kind of a version of a Peace Corps. Right. But that you get all these kids and say, OK, college starting next year and now you're going to go out into the community X, you're going to help you and you're going to take all people for a walk.

You're going to do this that theater.

You're going to go into poor areas that have been badly affected by by Colvard and that basically we mobilize them as well as a Problem-Solving force for your strange year and we're better off turning and faith in it and think this is a strange year, this is a weird year, and it needs new solutions rather than clinging like we clung to the Leaving CERT like like a relic right up until the last few weeks that if we can we're doing the same now.

And I think, well, there's more to us. I love that idea.

Yeah. Yeah I've heard. Yeah, yeah. I mean in fact I think attitudes attitude very much part of the system now. I do love that idea and I think a lot of colleges are more into those things now and giving, you know, points and credits for them. So yeah. Why not get them, get them going. They're already trying to get them off campus as much as possible. So make use of them.

Yeah. Yeah. And maybe don't get them to pay fees for hanging around on their own dime for the revolution starts at midnight.

If I very much get through that, the, the big thing you're saying to people is do not worry, do not panic, do not get upset here. There will be solutions found to most. Absolutely.

And the leaving search is not the be all and end all. And, you know, even if even if you are very sachem going to college and have very sat on a particular career path, there are many different ways of getting there. And you probably missed out on some of the advice and careers work maybe that you would have done with your teacher because school closed last year. But there is help available to you through the help lines. And I'm sure if you contact your school, they'll be able to put you in touch with someone that helps, but not to run into any decisions based on this.

Take your time. There's no rush.

Yeah, yeah. And you know what? Time is something. We have plenty of moment, isn't it. OK if a while. Thank you very much, Anstead O'Malley. Thank you. And let's take a break.

Email Brendan Ottati Desai.