From 1999 the Leaving Certificate exams will begin on the same day every year and the results will be out on the same day as the UK A levels. Until at least 2007, the Leaving Cert exams will begin on the Wednesday after the June bank holiday, and the results will be received on a corresponding date in mid-August.
Their release on the same day as the A level results will make it easier for the 10,000 to 11,000 students who apply to British and Northern universities and colleges.
This year the A level results were published last Thursday, five days before the Leaving Cert results.
The new synchronisation of dates is the outcome of a meeting earlier this year between the Department of Education, the Central Applications Office and the British Universities and Colleges Admissions Service.
The change in the June exam date was agreed after consultations with the teacher unions, the school management bodies and the National Parents Council - Post Primary.
The reason it is not beginning next year is because some boarding schools have already made their 1998 arrangements.
Currently, the days on which the Leaving Cert exams begin and the results are received change each year. The new system will make education planning easier.
It will also make it easier for families to plan holidays in advance. "In theory they can plan their holidays for five years ahead," said one senior Department official yesterday.
Meanwhile, Department, Central Applications Office and university officials have said the six-day gap between students receiving their Leaving Cert results and their first round of CAO offers is unlikely to be reduced significantly.
They were responding to a call by Teachers Union of Ireland president, Ms Alice Prendergast, for the new points commission to look at the "extra pressure and stress created for students and their parents by the gap between the announcement of the Leaving Cert results and the allocation of places under the CAO system".
Department sources outlined the detailed and complex marking, checking and computing procedures which took place before the "button was pressed" in Athlone last Friday to send the results electronically to the CAO and UCAS.
The schools received them on Tuesday, and students will receive their first round of CAO offers next Monday.
A CAO spokesman said the present six-day gap was "as short as one can possibly go with safety".
The CAO can deal with the majority of standard applicants, he went on, but "the admissions officers, who are the real experts, have to ponder, evaluate and make judgements on the non-standard applicants - and you can't do that in a rush".
The need to deal with huge amounts of data under pressure had led to a spokesman for the Northern Ireland examinations body, the CCEA, having to appear on television a week ago to apologise for an error in the distribution of results.