The "brutal" traditional Leaving Cert will go ahead this year with the Education Minister set to bring a memo to Cabinet later today.
There has been wide ranging criticism of the state exams with most calling for reforms.
Labour's education spokesman Aodhan O Riordain slammed the Department for a "lack of imagination" around the exams.
He told Morning Ireland: "It is quite a brutal exam and it needs to be radically reformed. And now we have a cohort of students who have been so disrupted already are facing into what is going to be more disruption until June and a traditional Leaving Cert."
The Ombudsman of Children, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals and even some voices from within Government were supporting a change from the traditional state exams.
Deputy O Riordain added: "All of those voices have not been listened to and I find it very difficult to understand."
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a quarter of students did not sit the Junior Cert which makes it more difficult to assess their grades without a sit-down exam, the Department have said.
Mr O Riordhain argued look for problems instead of solutions.
He said: "The Department of Education, they go out of their way to find problems. 75% of these students did do a Junior Cert. There are other mechanisms to find data that the teachers could refer to."
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