It is brutally competitive, anxiety-inducing and mentally gruelling – but at least it’s fair. That, at least, is how the Leaving Cert has been seen by generations of students.
This year, however, many candidates and their parents worry that the exams are playing out across a very uneven playing field.
That is because Leaving Cert results for the class of 2025 will be lower, on aggregate, as Minister for Education Helen McEntee prepares to tackle grade inflation, which saw tens of thousands of students receive bumper grades over the last five years.
While senior sources say the aim is for a “soft landing”, it still means first-time Leaving Certs will be at a disadvantage when competing for college places against applicants with inflated results from previous years.
Pope Francis death: Tributes paid to ‘good, decent man’; Taoiseach would be ‘honoured’ to attend funeral
New teachers will be fast-tracked into permanent posts to tackle staffing ‘crisis’
‘My foot was dangling loose’: Jogger injured by e-bike in Dublin feels ‘let down’
Decking, doughnuts and jogging: 25 fads that have been big in Ireland
How disadvantaged will they be? Will it really matter all that much at the end of the day? And what alternatives are there?
The Irish Times has spoken to a range of policymakers and experts to help establish the impact of the changes.
How much lower will students’ grades be this year?
Grades surged upwards by 4.4 percentage points on aggregate following the introduction of predicted grades in 2020 at the start of the Covid pandemic. They climbed higher still – an additional 2.6 percentage points – a year later when students had a choice of predicted grades or written exam marks. This brought the overall increase to approximately 7 percentage points over 2019 levels.
Grades have been artificially kept at this high level through a “postmarking adjustment” since 2021, which increases the marks of all corrected scripts.
Former minister for education Norma Foley left it to her successor, McEntee, to gradually return grades to pre-Covid norms.
The State Examinations Commission has been directed to apply a lower postmarking adjustment of 5.5 per cent this year as part of a gradual return to more normal grades. This is broadly midway between 2020 and 2021 levels.
What impact will this have on students’ CAO points?
Much depends on individual student performance, subject choice and other variables.
By one estimate, higher-level students since Covid have been securing an average of about 60 CAO points more than equivalent students before the pandemic.
By applying the lower postmarking adjustment planned for later this year, the same higher-level students could expect their results to be about 15 points lower.
These are, however, rough estimates and based on higher-level subjects only.
How many students on bumper Covid-era grades will the class of 2025 be competing against?
In any given year thousands of students apply for CAO courses using results they achieved in previous years. This year is no different.
While numbers for 2025 are still being finalised, it is expected that about 47,000 out of the 61,000 Leaving Cert students this year will apply to the CAO. They will be in competition against an estimated 10,000-plus CAO applicants with more inflated results from 2024, or 13 per cent of overall applicants.
If you add in students applying with inflated results from 2021-2023, the number is likely to be several thousand higher again.
Importantly, the CAO says there has been no significant increase in applicants with inflated results from recent years reapplying to CAO this year.
What chances will students have of getting their first-choice college courses this year?
About half of applicants are likely to get their first choice and a large majority (80-85 per cent) should get one of their top three choices, according to estimates from higher education sources. This reflects trends from recent years.
Are there other options McEntee could take to tackle grade inflation?
Some suggest applying the same postmarking adjustment for the class of 2025 to students presenting inflated grades from recent years.
There are legal difficulties with changing grades that have been previously issued, say informed sources. In addition, different measures were used in recent exams to compensate for Covid disruption – such as fewer questions or greater choice – which means unadjusted grades from one year to the next are not strictly comparable.
[ CAO applications: Maths and statistics up 20% this year, according to dataOpens in new window ]
Another option is to ringfence a proportion of CAO places for the class of 2025 only, so they do not have to compete with applicants with inflated grades.
This, say sources, also poses legal problems. In addition, the Minister has no control over the CAO, which is operated by colleges.
A final option is to increase college places in high-demand courses – such as medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, etc – to take some of the heat out of the CAO points race.
The Government says new places are due to come on stream this year in dentistry and pharmacy on the back of recent expansion of programmes in medicine and physiotherapy.
[ First look: Sample Leaving Cert exam papers for brand new subjectsOpens in new window ]
Is there potential for legal action if this year’s students miss out on college places due to lower grade inflation?
Yes, the threat of legal action is something that has been discussed at senior levels at the Department of Education.
The department faced legal actions from students in 2020-21 who applied for college with grades from 2019, before Covid-era grade inflation. They argued that they unfairly missed out on college places they would have secured were it not for grade inflation.
None of these cases was ultimately unsuccessful.
How do students feel about it all?
Some are highly exercised and thousands of students – and their parents – signed a recent online poll calling for fairness.
Not everyone is so exercised. Preston O’Keeffe (17), a Leaving Cert student from Tralee who wants to study politics, believes grades should return back to pre-Covid levels at a gradual rate. Kayleigh McNamara (18) from Athlone, who hopes to study forensic science, says she is “not too worried” either.
“It’s tough to predict how much competition with last year’s class will affect this year’s students, especially since they’ll be a minority,” she says. “Grade inflation can’t go on forever, and gradually lowering it seems like a logical way to phase inflation out.”
