Substantial increase in number of students sitting Irish exam

The results are in. Following a promise by the Minister for Education, Norma Foley, it had been widely expected that grades for the class of 2022 would match the record high results which saw 27 per cent of college applicants score 500 points or more last year — a rise from 13 per cent before the pandemic.

Indeed, the State Examinations Commission has said that they will raise grades, if necessary, to ensure they are no lower than last year’s. But, if the results were higher than last year’s, they would not decrease them.

So, has that promise been fulfilled? It looks like it: unwinding the grade inflation brought on the pandemic may ultimately have to happen, but it’s not going to be this year.

Ultimately, CAO points are likely to track the grades of this year’s 60,000 Leaving Cert students so a rise in grades will likely lead to some increase in CAO points.

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Once again, this is likely to mean that some students who secured the number of points needed for their course (or even secured 625 points) will miss out on their dream course as random selection — a cruel system by any measure — is applied.

Irish

For a decade now, Irish has consistently had the highest number of top grades in any subject outside minority languages and music — subjects that tend to attract students who are already reasonably skilled students.

This year, a total of 43,894 students, or 83.1 per cent of all Leaving Cert candidates, sat an Irish paper at either higher, ordinary or foundation level. This is a substantial rise from last year, when Irish was the least popular written exam with just 58 per cent opting to sit the paper and the rest choosing to take an accredited grade only.

The number of H1s has risen from 11.9 per cent last year to 12.7 per cent in 2022. This is the second year in a row that the number of top grades has gone up, and it’s up from an average of 9 per cent for the years 2019 to 2021 (a year that includes the calculated grades provided to the class of 2020 when the exams were cancelled as a result of the Covid pandemic).

Overall, H1 to H5 grades have risen from 87.3 per cent in 2020 fallen slightly, down from 94.3 per cent in 2021 to 93.8 per cent. Almost everybody who sits the higher level Irish paper is securing an “honour” (although the concept has been officially abolished, some parents still think of a H1-H6 as an honours grade). The fail rate, which rose from 0.2 per cent to 0.8 per cent last year, is back down to 0.2 per cent today.

At ordinary level, O1 grades rose from 0.3 per cent in 2019 to 1.9 per cent in 2020, 3 per cent last year and 3.4 per cent this year, while the fail rate is up from 1.6 per cent to 1.9 per cent.

English

English has always been one of the trickiest subjects to secure top marks in, largely because no marking scheme can quite capture the subjective nature of good or bad writing. On the plus side, however, it has always had one of the lowest higher-level fail rates.

Between 2017 and 2019, an average of 2.9 per cent of students got a H1 in English. In 2020, under calculated grades, that rose to 4.4 per cent and, in 2021, 7.6 per cent. This year, it has fallen slightly, down to 7.2 per cent.

Overall, the number of H1-H5 grades in English is up slightly from 94.3 per cent to 95.5 per cent this year, although this belies a slight drop in the number of H2s and H3s awarded. Failure rates are down from 0.5 per cent to 0.2 per cent.

At ordinary level, the number of top grades also shows signs of returning to a slightly more normal distribution, with O1s down from 5.4 per cent to 4.7 per cent.

Maths

The grades awarded to maths students will always have a greater impact on the CAO points for college courses, because every student who gets a H6 or higher will be awarded 25 bonus points. In a normal year, those extra 25 points are very helpful; in more recent years, with inflated CAO points tracking inflated Leaving Cert grades, they’re a godsend that can push a student over the line.

The number of H1s in maths is up this year, rising from 15.1 per cent to 18.1 per cent, with H2s also trending upwards, from 17.5 per cent to 19.2 per cent. More students have also been awarded H3 grades (20.6 per cent in 2021, 22.6 per cent this year).

Almost everybody — 98.3 per cent — who sat the higher level paper got those all-important 25 bonus points, and that’s down by a statistically insignificant 0.6 per cent from 2021.

On the ordinary level paper, the number of O1s is down from 7.2 last year to 6 per cent this year, although O2s are up 4 per cent from 15.1 per cent and O3s have risen from 21.9 per cent to 25 per cent. The fail rate rises very slightly, from 0.7 per cent to 0.9 per cent.

Other subjects

Grade inflation was seen across the board last year. This year, grades overall are a little more stable: there has been further grade inflation but the pace of it, at least, seems to be slowing down.

Some of the largest rises have been in language subjects, with top marks in French — the most popular foreign language subject at Leaving Cert level — going to 14.1 per cent of students, compared to 10.8 per cent last year. Last year, H1 grades were awarded to 12.3 per cent of German students; this year, 15.8 per cent took top marks.

In the science subjects, 23.7 per cent of students got a H1 in physics, up from 21.1 per cent last year. In biology, 17.6 per cent got a H1, up 0.2 per cent from last year. But top marks for chemistry are down from 23.4 per cent to 19.1 per cent.

H1s awarded in geography are up from 10.2 to 10.5 per cent, while 16.3 per cent of higher-level business students got full marks, compared to 13.7 per cent last year.

There are few areas where top marks have fallen although this year, 17.3 per cent of higher level history students got a H1, compared to 18.2 per cent last year, and top marks for art students are down from 13.2 per cent in 2021 to 10.6 per cent this year.

Last year, minority language subjects (which have a relatively smaller number of sits) including Dutch, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Portuguese and Russian, were among the few that did not record inflated grades, which suggested that examiners may be holding fluent speakers to higher standards.

This year, once again, saw the number of top grades in Arabic, Dutch, Russian, Hungarian and Latvian fall. The decline in top grades in Latvian was particularly notable, with H1s down from 12.5 per cent last year to 2.9 per cent in 2022.