In a lofty Georgian building in the heart of Dublin's north inner city Junior Certificate students are learning about the 1798 rebellion and of rebels like Wolfe Tone.
Henrietta Street School caters for 20 vulnerable young teens, some of them rebels too, in their own way.
Nine students here were expecting to sit their Junior Certificate exams this coming June and news of the cancellation of the exams has come as a heavy blow.
Henrietta Street School is a school for children at risk, boys and girls, but mostly boys who would all have had difficulties in their schools; mostly behavioural difficulties.
They are children who have experienced significant trauma in their young lives.
"They come in a lot of cases having been expelled from their old schools or they just couldn't manage to go," principal Fergus Carpenter explains.
"What they all share is a level of social risk, due to family circumstances. It wouldn't be unusual for our students to have been homeless or to have faced addiction issues among parents or siblings. Premature death would be reasonably common too, unfortunately."
For the vast majority of students across the country the Junior Certificate is no longer a defining moment in their lives. So, its cancellation earlier this year caused no controversy, and little surprise.
Most students stay on at school, to complete a Leaving Certificate course. But the students attending a school like Henrietta Street are different.
As soon as they can, as soon as they reach the legal age which allows them to leave, 16, they want to move on.
Fergus Carpenter says the promise of the Junior Cert is what enables the schools to "hold on" to them. And it gives them some vital recognition.
"Our teachers do an amazing job. When a student comes to us, over two or three years they help them to regain confidence as learners, and the culmination of that is the Junior Certificate exam.
"It’s the document that says to them 'on behalf of the state this is the level you have reached, you have studied, you have worked, you have gone to school, and this is the piece of paper that proves that’. It is hugely important for them."
The Department of Education says that the Junior Cert exams were cancelled due to public health considerations, and the logistics of running the Leaving Certificate exams.
Those Leaving Cert exams are, it says, its "clear priority".
It points out that students will receive state certification for school-based assessment.
The department says that "consideration is being given, however, to a later running of the Junior Cycle examination. This would be limited to Adult Learners and Early School Leavers".
However, it has set no date for this.
But none of this washes with Fergus Carpenter.
He refers to one student who struggled to return when the school reopened in February. (It is a special school so it reopened earlier than others.) The school worked hard, calling to his house, talking to his family. And that student, Tyreese O'Farrell, finally came back this week.
Fergus Carpenter says Tyreese’s only motivation is the promise of the Junior Cert exams.
"His whole talk is around the Junior Cert exams. He wants to get an apprenticeship. He wants the results of an examination in his hand. If I have to say to him 'listen sorry you will just get a school assessment report’, it’s not good. I can’t see us holding on to him."
Student Tori Dunne explains why regular school didn’t work out for her: "Too many people and just getting myself into trouble. I couldn’t just sit at a table."
Tori would like to become an SNA, but she worries that she might not be able for it. "I can lose me patience sometimes," she says.
Tyreese tells me that he wants to become a mechanic, or a builder, but he says that if there is no Junior Cert then he thinks he will stop coming to school. "Honestly, what's the point?," he asks.
Tori, Tyreese, and their fellow student Brad Mulholland all praise Henrietta Street school and the support they have received here.
"They listen. You get treated like a human being. You are respected," Brad says.
The school is hoping that the Department of Education will listen now.
It is making this appeal in conjunction with a number of other similar schools across the country.
"Across all the schools we are talking about a total of 7 subjects only at Ordinary Level, for between 30-35 children. In terms of resources, it’s miniscule," says Fergus Carpenter.
"Our kids, they are children at risk. They will be making decisions around their future and which paths they will take in life and some of them, when they leave, will not choose healthy paths," he warns.
"So, we like to maximise the chance that they will make healthier choices for themselves, and for society.
"The minister could - and very easily and at no great cost - really change the lives and the direction of the lives of these students," Fergus adds.
The students are still hopeful that they will get to sit their exams in June. They know this would be a big challenge for them, but it is one that they want to face.
"It will probably be hard sitting it," says Tori, "but it will be important to do because it will get you far in life".
