Five key lessons from this year’s Leaving Cert, from inflated grades to mathematical trauma

1. We’re still locked into inflated grades

Following instructions from the Minister for Education Norma Foley, in recent weeks the grades awarded to this year’s Leaving Cert students were adjusted upwards to 2022 and 2021 levels.

Following the marking of scripts, results were lower across the board than the unadjusted marks of 2022. Therefore, a bigger adjustment was needed to bring the results up to the final 2022 level.

On the back of this, the originally marked scripts of all 2023 Leaving Cert students were adjusted upwards by 7.9 per cent in recent weeks (an increase on the 5.6 per cent adjustment which occurred in 2022). This resulted in an upward adjustment in 71 per cent of grades awarded to candidates (an increase on the 50 per cent of grades which increased in 2022.

Interestingly, results at the lower end were increased by a greater margin and results at top end were increased by a smaller margin.

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Why? The State Examinations Commission said this “linear adjustment” is a standard method used internationally in education rankings, is fair to students and minimises grade inflation.

The same adjustment was made across all subjects and levels. To get a sense of how it works, in an exam marked out of 100, it adds a little under 13 marks to a mark of 0, just under 9 marks to a mark of 50, and just over 5 marks to a mark of 100.

2. CAO points will likely remain at last year’s levels.

Students receiving their results from 10am this morning will be pleasantly surprised to see how well they have done, resulting from the grade inflation process which their originally marked scripts have now undergone.

But the joy may be short lived for some when they access their CAO offers next Wednesday afternoon.

There will be cases where 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 1st 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 only occurred in a handful of courses last year.

3. The trauma of maths paper one is clear

Compared to the 2019 cohort of Leaving Cert students, the class of 2023 is still securing greatly enhanced grades. Taking the core subjects of Irish, English and maths at higher level, this year’s candidates are still 15 per cent ahead in terms of top grades (H1s, 2s and 3s) awarded in Irish and maths, and 21 per cent ahead in English.

The only caveat to that rosy picture is higher level maths. In 2023, most probably as a result of what was perceived to have been a particularly difficult maths paper one exam, this year’s cohort secured H1-H3 grades in only 50 per cent of cases, a drop of 10.5 per cent on 2022 scores.

4. Northern Ireland students and those from overseas are at a disadvantage

Those who will be least happy with the Norma Foley’s decision to continue to inflate grades to previous levels are CAO applicants from Northern Ireland who are presenting A-level awards, or students who sat the International Baccalaureate (IB), as well as the many thousands of continental European applicants to the CAO.

In most cases, grade inflation has disappeared or is almost gone. All of these applicants’ exam grades have in recent weeks been converted into CAO points using a pre published formula. Once included, they must compete for places on the same basis as Leaving Cert students with inflated grades, in most cases.

5. Crisis in securing teachers to mark the Leaving Cert exams eases

As in all aspects of life, money talks. Over many years now the State Examinations Commission has struggled to attract applicants to correct exam papers. In 2023 the SEC greatly increased the payments on offer to teachers to undertake this work and 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 a full week earlier than in 2022 which will enable colleges to get incoming first years on campus by the second week in September.