The information published today on feeder schools aims to provide parents with a snapshot of information about how many students from each school in the Republic of Ireland go on to various third-level colleges in Ireland.
This includes progression data for 20 publicly funded colleges in the Republic of Ireland; the two Northern Irish universities – Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University; and two independent, fee-paying third-levels, Griffith College and Dublin Business School.
Our list normally includes all schools in the Republic of Ireland where 11 or more pupils sat the Leaving Cert exam, with just a few exceptions.
The information in today’s list is compiled from two sources: the State Examinations Commission Leaving Cert sits list, which tells us the number of students that sat the Leaving Cert in each post-primary school this year; and lists provided by each of the higher education institutions, which tell us the school of origin of the full-time, first-year undergraduate cohort.
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Elsewhere in today’s feeder schools supplement, we outline the other factors that parents and guardians should consider when choosing a secondary school. We also look at why parents should consider how many students from their local school progress to further education and training – data for which is not centrally collected by the State – and why they should take this into account with their school choice.
These tables give information on every student who ever attended a particular school and began to study this year, and thus includes mature students and deferrals; it is not a picture of the class of 2025 alone.
Caveats and cautions
Each of the colleges on this list records the information in slightly different formats, which means there can be minor discrepancies.
This year, TU Dublin’s report on the school of origin of their students closed on October 31st, 2025. As a result, the school of origin of approximately 1,800 TU Dublin entrants is not included in this report. As the number of affected students who progressed to TU Dublin but were not included before October 31st is likely to be evenly distributed across the university’s feeder schools, we expect no school’s reported progression rate will be disproportionately affected, though we remain mindful that some schools may be affected. A full report will not be available from TU Dublin until at least March 2026.
Many students will change schools during their time in secondary education, and some third-level institutions will record every school that the student ever attended; as a result, the progression level of some schools is likely to be over-reported. On the other hand, every year most third-levels are unable to identify the school of origin of a small number of their students – which means those schools don’t get a credit.
The lists, unfortunately, don’t account for the numbers moving into apprenticeships or further education as the State does not centrally collect this data. The Irish Times continues its efforts to gather this information.
Our lists do not provide information on how many students went on to study in the UK or overseas, although we know that if this data was available, many Protestant schools – including the College of St Columba and St Andrew’s in Dublin, as well as schools in Border counties – would have higher reported third-level progression rates.
Why is my school not on this list?
Some people will go looking for their local school and find it missing. Why? There are six main reasons:
- The school had fewer than 10 students sitting the Leaving Cert this year and, for data protection reasons, the Department of Education may have withheld information on those schools and their sits.
- The school has amalgamated with other local schools. Where possible – and it usually is – we credit deferred or mature students from a now-closed school to the school into which it has merged.
- The school has closed.
- The school introduced a mandatory transition year in 2023 which means it had no Leaving Cert class this year.
- It is a relatively new school and has not yet had a sixth-year group.
- The school is a “grind school” run without State support. These include the Dublin Academy of Education, Institute of Education, Hewitt College, Yeats College and others.
How to read this list
Let’s say, for example, you want to see how the schools in Co Cork, or Dublin 11, have fared.
- Go to the section for Co Cork, Dublin 11, etc.
- “Number who sat Leaving Cert 2025”: This column tells you the total number of students from each school who registered for calculated grades, from every school in that area, based on figures provided by the Department of Education.
- “Total number (all years)”: This column tells you the total number of students from that school who either registered for calculated grades this year or sat their Leaving Cert in that school in 2025 or previous years (or who repeated the Leaving Cert in another school), and started full-time undergraduate studies in a publicly funded, third-level institution on the island of Ireland.
- “Total percentage progression (all years)”: The percentage of students from each school who applied for calculated grades, plus those who sat the Leaving Cert in previous years and either deferred making a CAO application until 2024 or repeated in another institution, and started full-time undergraduate studies in a publicly funded, third-level institution on the island of Ireland.
Accuracy and fairness
To ensure the greatest possible degree of accuracy and fairness, The Irish Times uses a standardised system to compile this list. We use this system to help us spot the vast majority of errors and data holes, but there are numerous complicating factors – primarily the fact that our information is only as good as the data we receive – which means that some schools will occasionally record a lower third-level progression than is accurate.
While we are committed to improving our systems, and the quality of the data has increased over the past two decades, any significant deviation from our current system would lead to a significantly skewed and wholly inaccurate list. The Irish Times will investigate and correct errors that are brought to our attention, but regret that we cannot enter into correspondence regarding the manner in which this data is compiled.
Data sources
This schools data originates at the State Examinations Commission. It is forwarded to the Central Applications Office, which forwards it to the Higher Education institutes. As the data is provided to third-levels for particular administrative purposes, those institutions cannot stand over the accuracy of the data if it is used for any other purpose.
The data in this table includes every institution in which a candidate sat the examination, even if only for one subject. Therefore, the data will not reflect the number of incoming students to any given third-level college, because in cases where, for example, a candidate sat the examination twice, that candidate will appear as a statistic under both institutions and be doubly entered in the data. The double counting occurs even where the candidate repeated the examination in the institution where they first sat the examination.
