Nearly 25% of Leaving Certificate rechecks result in upgrades

Almost one in four Leaving Cert subject results that were rechecked in recent weeks have been upgraded this year, new figures show.

Candidates will be able to find out if they have received an upgrade from 11am on Friday when they access their self-service portal online (examinations.ie).

Just over 6,100 candidates appealed almost 11,650 individual results. Of these, a total of 2,729 results have been upgraded, or just under 24 per cent.

College applications

Quality assurance checks on marked scripts also resulted in 28 candidates, who had not appealed their result, receiving an upgrade.

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The State Examinations Commission said the final number of upgrades represents less than 1 per cent of all Leaving Cert results awarded this year.

These upgrades have been communicated to the Central Applications Office (CAO), which handles college applications. It will issue fresh offers if applicants have qualified for a higher-preference course.

The final round of CAO offers for the current academic year are due to be offered on October 3rd.

A breakdown of appeals shows the highest number of upgrades were awarded in higher-level maths (296), followed by higher-level English (287) and biology (282).

In the processing of appeals, the marking of each candidate’s work was reviewed question-by-question using the original marking scheme.

The reviews were carried out by different examiners to the ones who originally marked the work.

While the appeals marking process took place as in any normal year, the process this year also had to allow for the reapplication of the “post marking adjustment” following the appeal marking.

Appeal results

This is on foot of Minister for Education Norma Foley’s pledge to ensure this year’s results were no lower than last year’s, on aggregate.

When candidates access their appeal results today they will see whether their exam mark changed on appeal and, if so, their new post-mark-adjustment mark as well as their final grade.

Candidates who are still unhappy with the outcome of their appeal can apply to view their remarked written exam script by Monday next.

In addition, candidates may refer their script to a panel of appeal scrutineers, who are fully independent of the staff and management of the State Examinations Commission and the marking teams.

Providing assurances

These candidates have the option of raising any outstanding issues of concern regarding the marking of their work. The scrutineers review the entire processing of the appeal, in order to provide assurance to the candidate that it has been correctly carried out.

Details of these processes, how to apply, and the relevant application forms have been set out for candidates in Leaving Certificate 2023 —Candidate Information Guide, which issued with candidates’ results.

In all, this year’s Leaving Cert candidates applied to view almost 118,000 scripts.

A total of just over 10 per cent of candidates made an appeal against one or more results, down from 14 per cent last year.

The number of individual subject appeals represents almost 3 per cent of the total number of grades issued. For comparison, this figure was almost 5 per cent in 2022.