Five key lessons from this year’s Leaving Cert, from an avalanche of maths bonus points to a fierce CAO points race

1: Inflation once again
Students receiving their results from 10am this morning will be pleasantly surprised to see how well they have done. Following instructions from the Minister for Education Norma Foley in April this year, the grades awarded to this year’s Leaving Cert students were adjusted upwards to the high levels of 2021-2023. To do this, the originally marked scripts of all 2024 Leaving Cert students were adjusted upwards by an average of 7.5 per cent over recent weeks. The range of upward adjustment for individual grades varied from between 12.1 per cent for those at the bottom of the scale to 4.8 per cent at the top. This resulted in 68 per cent of students’ grades, overall, increasing.
2: CAO points race will be fierce in some areas
The joy at getting high grades may be short lived for some when they access their CAO offers next Wednesday afternoon. Some students who are celebrating a 600-plus points score today will still fail to secure an offer of their first-choice course next Wednesday. Even more frustrated will be the truly unfortunate CAO applicants who may have secured the maximum score of 625 and fail to secure their first-choice place through the random selection process. This process occurs when there are more applicants on a particular CAO points score than there are places remaining to fill. Thankfully, this misfortune occurred only in a handful of courses last year.
3: Avalanche of bonus points in higher level maths
Higher-level maths continues to deliver an avalanche of bonus CAO points for Leaving Cert students. Some 20,330 students sat higher level in 2024. Of these, almost all – 19,640 – secured 25 bonus CAO points. (The other 690 students did not because they scored a H7 or lower.) This means there are some 490,000-plus bonus CAO points added to applicants’ scores, which will inevitably be reflected in a continuation of high points requirements in next Wednesday college offers. Higher-level Irish students also continued to outperform most subjects with 94 per cent of them securing a H5 or higher.
4: Students from North at a disadvantage
Those least happy with Norma Foley’s decision to continue to inflate grades to previous levels are CAO applicants from Northern Ireland and the UK who are presenting A-level awards received recently, or students who sat the International baccalaureate (IB), as well as the many thousands of continental European applicants to the CAO. Grade inflation has disappeared outside Ireland. However, external applicants’ exam grades will be converted into CAO points using a pre-published formula. Once included, they must compete for places on the same basis next Wednesday as Leaving Cert students with their inflated grades.
5: Teacher shortage eases for exam work
As in all aspects of life, money talks. In 2023 the State Examinations Commission greatly increased the payments on offer to teachers to undertake marking. It launched a dedicated website to promote the benefits to teachers both professionally and financially of doing so. This initiative was very successful and the results have been issued today, enabling some colleges to get incoming first years on campus in early September. The late issuing of results in recent years caused huge challenges for students, scrambling for accommodation, and colleges, who like to be able to ease new students in with orientation sessions.