Leaving Certifcate results will be lower this year as officials begin to tackle grade inflation which saw tens of thousands of students receive bumper grades over recent years, according to Department of Education records.
The move to reduce grade inflation, however, means the class of 2025 will be at a disadvantage when competing for college places against applicants with inflated results from previous years.
Officials told Minister for Education Helen McEntee it is intended that a post-marking adjustment will artificially inflate results for this year’s Leaving Certs by 5.5 per cent on average.
This is lower than the 7.5 per cent post-marking adjustments which have been in place over recent years.
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Briefing material prepared by Department of Education officials for Ms McEntee states that lowering the post-marking intervention in 2025 aims to bring the overall set of aggregate results to a point “no lower than broadly midway between 2020 and 2021 levels”.
“It is intended that in 2025 a post-marking adjustment will mean that results on the aggregate are expected to be above 2019 levels by at least 5.5 per cent on average,” the briefing notes state. “The level of future year adjustments to examinations and assessment after 2025 and the timeline for phasing out a post-marking adjustment will be informed by the 2025 adjustment.”
The Irish Times understands that the potential for litigation among students who may lose out on sought-after college places due to being disadvantaged as a result is a source of concern and has been discussed at senior levels.
Competition for college places looks set to be strong given a record number of CAO applications for college courses this year – 83,000, up from about 77,000 last year – which may add to the competition for places.
A breakdown of the applicants is not yet available, but typically about 50,000 are Leaving Cert candidates from the current year, with the remainder made up of former students with results from previous years or applicants from abroad.
Some education sources say the creation of additional college places in high-demand courses such as medicine and pharmacy may take some of the heat out of the CAO points race. They also point to the fact that about three-quarters of applicants secure one of their top three course choices.
Leaving Cert grades soared during the Covid pandemic after the cancellation of exams and the use of more generous teacher-predicted grades, as well as adjustments to the exams aimed at compensating for disruption to students' education.
The then minister for education Norma Foley decided to keep grades at these high levels to achieve “fairness” for students whose education was badly disrupted during Covid.
These inflated grades – which have been maintained for the past five years – have had a knock-on consequences for CAO points.
A number of senior higher education figures have expressed concern that high grades have made it difficult to differentiate between top candidates given that so many students have been achieving top marks. This in turn has led to an increase in the use of random selection – or a lottery – to select top candidates for high-demand courses such as medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and others.
The extent to which post-marking adjustments can inflate grades is evident in last year’s Leaving Cert results.
The State Examinations Commission adjusted students’ marked scripts upwards by an average of 7.5 per cent. This resulted in 68 per cent of grades increasing. As a result it is estimated that students last year gained on average about 60 CAO points more than they would have before the pandemic.
