This year’s Leaving Certificate grades will be at least as high as last year’s record-breaking set of results, fuelling concern within universities over the use of random selection for high-points courses.
The results, due to issue online to 60,000 candidates at 10am on Friday, are expected to match last year’s strong results which saw a record 27 per cent of college applicants score 500 points or more, up from about 13 per cent before Covid.
It follows a commitment from Minister for Education Norma Foley that this year’s results will be “no lower” than last year, in a move aimed at winning support among students for a return to in-person exams last June.
This is being achieved by allowing the State Examinations Commission (SEC) to apply a “postmarking intervention”, which will lift all students’ marks, if necessary. Students’ marks will not be lowered if they are above last year’s high grade profile.
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However, university sources have expressed concern at high grades which, they say, will force them to introduce random selection, or a lottery, for many high-points courses in areas such as computing, dentistry, law, pharmacy and science.
While random selection was used in just 8 per cent of courses overall last year, it jumped to just over 40 per cent among courses requiring 550 points or more.
In a small number of cases, students who secured maximum points — 625 — still did not secure their first-preference course due to random selection.
Senior higher education sources say a repeat is likely this year due to the “populist” decision to ensure this year’s results are at least as high as those in 2021.
“We saw other jurisdictions, such as the UK, lower the profile of grades this year but not in Ireland,” said one senior university source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It was a populist decision that will lead to more random selection. It also means some students will struggle in high-points courses which they might not have got into in normal times. We saw the impact of that in university this year with a decline in pass rates.”
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Another senior higher education source said universities have not received enough funding to meet the full scale of additional demand for places this year.
“We’ll do what we can, we’ll try to stretch capacity where we can, but it’s not sustainable. Outside of medicine, where about 60 additional places have been funded this year, we could see further points increases across a number of high-demand areas,” the source said.
Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris said on Wednesday that while grades have climbed in recent years due to assessment measures adopted during the Covid pandemic, his colleague Ms Foley was keen to avoid a “cliff-edge” this year by returning to a normal pattern of grades.
“We’re trying to avoid the situation where one student in one year gets massively inflated grades, and a student the next year is disadvantaged,” he said.
Mr Harris said while the SEC will fulfil its mandate to ensure grades are no lower than last year, he hoped grades will not climb significantly higher this year.
He said the higher education sector has provided an additional 1,000 college places, targeted across high-demand courses and where there are significant skills shortages, such as medicine, engineering and nursing.
“We have gone full throttle at trying to maximise capacity in September in areas where there is additional demand,” he said.
Several university sources are also concerned that there may be a surge in demand from college applicants this year seeking to defer taking up their places due to the crisis in student accommodation.
Some have cautioned, however, that the accommodation crisis may be repeated next year given that it will take several years to deliver a significant increase in on-campus accommodation.
Most colleges have focused instead on highlighting the rent-a-room scheme this year in the hope that more homeowners will rent out rooms to students.
While universities say they have received hundreds of offers in recent weeks, officials say it is likely to make just a small dent in demand for accommodation.
