BY AMY ROSE HARTE

LESS and less students from Donegal are sitting the Leaving Certificate, it has emerged.

New figures show that there has been a 13 percent drop in the number of students from the county completing their end-of-school exams. According to statistics released by the Examinations Board last week, 2,411 students sat the paper in 1999 compared to just 2,086 this year.

While the total number of students sitting the Leaving Cert has gone down nationally, Donegal appears to be mirroring the national trend which shows a decrease in the number of students taking the three main business subjects - business studies, economics and accounting. The Examinations Board recorded a 26 percent drop in the number of students from Donegal who are studying business subjects.

A total of 692 sat the Business paper this year in comparison to 907 in 1999. Over the same period, Accounting declined from 277 to 198 while Economics went down from 173 to 118.

Meanwhile, the most popular subjects among Donegal students are the stalwarts of modern European languages, science and geography subjects.

The most popular Leaving Cert subject among Donegal pupils in 2007 was Biology (1145), with French a close second (925) and Geography (882) coming third. Other modern languages studied were German (180) and Spanish (71).

The least popular subject was Italian (1), while trailing closely behind was Religious Education (16), Applied Maths (17) and PhysChem (46).