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Leaving Certificate students will be able to access their results online or at their school on Friday September 3rd and will have a "very short" timeframe to lodge appeals, the State Examinations Commission (SEC) has said.
Students this year had the choice of sitting written exams, opting for accredited grades, or both, across individual subjects.
School historical data is not being used for calculating Leaving Certificate students’ accredited grades this year – but further “refinements” to last year’s system are being explored.
The use of historical school data, and its removal, was the subject of controversy under the calculated grades process last year and led to concerns over school profiling.
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This data - the track record of individual schools in the Leaving Cert over a three-year period - was removed from the standardisation process following uproar in the UK when thousands of students had results downgraded, especially those in disadvantaged schools.
In Ireland, however, many high-performing schools claimed their students were unfairly penalised by the decision after recording lower grades than expected when results were published last September.
Examinations and accredited grades
A guide to the results process for the Leaving Certificate released by theSEC on Thursday said students will be able to access their results from 10am on Friday September 3rd.
On the day on which the results are issued, neither candidates nor schools will know whether the provisional result awarded was from an examination or an Accredited Grade, the SEC said. However, they will have access to this information four days after they receive their results.
The examination results and the accredited grades will be brought together only for the purposes of determining the better result for those candidates who have opted for both.
Students will get their first chance to see a breakdown of their grades showing which grade was achieved via accredited grades or written exams on Tuesday September 7th, from 5pm. CAO offers are due to take place on the same day.
Appeals
The timeline this year for candidates to apply to view scripts and to lodge their appeal applications would be “very short” and deadlines “strictly applied” to ensure the appeal process can be completed as quickly as possible, the SEC said.
Candidates will have from 5pm on Tuesday September 7th until 8pm on Wednesday September 8th to make their application to view their scripts and will be provided with an opportunity to view their marked scripts across three sessions on Saturday September 11th.
Schools will have the option of an additional session on the morning of Sunday, September 12th.
Candidates who sat examinations only will have access to the examinations appeal process, while candidates who received accredited grades only will have access to the accredited grades appeal process. Students who sat both in any given subject will have the choice of applying for either or both processes.
Earlier this year it was announced that there will be 1,250 additional places in high-demand programmes in third-level institutions, on top of 1,415 announced under the Human Capital Initiative.
Results Day
Caution was advised in making arrangements in relation to results day at schools due to the rising incidence rate of Covid-19 and the Delta variant. Schools were advised to schedule a time for candidates to come to the school and to respect physical distancing requirements.
Gathering groups of students in one venue was “not recommended at this time.”
Schools would also have “flexibility to ask some classes of current students not to attend school on that day to ensure adequate social distancing in schools.”