Will CAO points drop due to efforts to tackle grade inflation this year?

My Leaving Cert daughter is upset. Due to measures to tackle grade inflation this year, she feels she will be unfairly competing against candidates with bumper grades from previous years for CAO places. The courses she wants to study were on about 550 points last year. How much will her grades be “deflated” by? What impact will this have on CAO points this year?

There are several factors – apart from inflated grades – which can influence the entry cut-off point for the CAO’s round one offers in late August.

One is the number of places offered to round one candidates on each course.

The Government has been funding additional places in some high-demand courses in recent times, such as medical and therapeutic courses.

Will CAO points drop due to efforts to tackle grade inflation this year?

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Where additional places are provided, CAO points often drop. This is because the last person through the door of the lecture theatre, so to speak, will typically have a lower points score than would be the case if the additional places had not been provided.

New courses can also affect the supply and demand of courses.

For example, additional pharmacy and veterinary courses are due to come on stream next year (not, unfortunately, in time for September of this year). If and when they do, the points for the existing courses should drop.

Change in demand for places on courses is another factor.

The number of applicants, overall, has increased significantly in 2025. Demand among students across individual courses changes from year to year. Greater demand usually leads to points going up.

Finally, there’s grade inflation. As your daughter is aware, grades jumped in 2020 and again in 2021 with the introduction of teacher-predicted grades. The results have since been artificially inflated at this level (about 7 per cent, on aggregate, above normal times) by a “postmarking intervention”, so as not to disadvantage students competing against students with results from previous years. This year, however, the postmarking intervention will reduce to 5.5 per cent in advance of normal results.

What does this mean for a student this year? A candidate who secured 512 CAO points in 2019 would have received, roughly, about 550 points on foot of inflated grades over recent years. The same student could expect to receive, roughly, 538 points in 2025.

Consequently, your daughter might expect CAO points for her desired courses to drop due to so many getting lower points. But about one-in-four round one applicants (about 15,000) will be Leaving Certs from previous years; many will be on bumper grades. Their higher CAO points will give them an advantage over any equivalent 2025 Leaving Cert student.

I am sure it feels very unfair for your daughter. If there is any consolation, she is in the same boat as the rest of the class of 2025. At this stage, her best bet is to try to ignore issues outside her control and simply focus on doing the best she can in the exams.