Sean Claffey pictured at the Marist College in Athlone, where he achieved 100% in his Honours Maths exam during this year's Leaving Certificate.

Sean makes no mistake with a 100% honours Maths result!

A Glasson native has become the second Marist College student in three years to achieve a remarkable 100% result in honours Maths in his Leaving Cert.

After being awarded a H1 grade in the subject, Sean Claffey got to view his marked exam paper in recent weeks and discovered he had earned maximum points in every section.

He was taught Maths at the Marist by John Parker, who retired last year, and then Paul Kelly, the school's deputy principal.

Sean said Maths had been his strongest subject since he was eight or nine years of age, and he will be continuing to use his numerical ability at third-level, having just started a course in Financial Mathematics at UCD.

When contacted by the Westmeath Independent, he spoke modestly about his achievement of getting everything right in the honours Maths exam.

"I had two good teachers, and they really push Maths in the Marist. You need to get a bit of luck as well in the exam itself," Sean commented.

He said the most challenging part of the Leaving Cert year was when the school was closed and classes were being held remotely due to the pandemic.

"The online learning was fairly tough, I'm not going to lie. But when we got back into school we were good at getting stuck into it, and going as quickly as we could through stuff," he said.

Sean is a son of Maria and Dermot Claffey, and has a younger brother, Kevin, and a younger sister, Ella.

He attended Tubberclair NS up to the end of fifth class, and the family then moved to Sweden for three years, in connection with Dermot's job at Ericsson, before returning to Ireland where Sean started in the Marist in third year.

Sean pictured with Marist College principal Michael Dermody and deputy principal Paul Kelly.

Paul Kelly hailed his student's fantastic performance in his honours Maths paper.

"We had Ruaidhri Campion in 2019, who received the exact same accolade, so it's a phenomenal achievement for the school to have two (100% results) inside three years.

"They don't give out figures for the number of students that would have achieved that result, but without doubt it's extremely rare.

"Sean is a remarkable student, a remarkable individual. He was a student who had a flair for Maths but who also worked hard to get to where he was, so we're very proud overall," said the Marist College deputy principal.

"We're very strong in our Maths and Sciences here in the school and in this year's Leaving Cert we had 48% of students getting a H1 or H2 grade in higher-level Maths.

"That's nearly one in every two students getting over 80%, so it's a fair achievement, and we're over the moon in that regard," he commented.