Tens of thousands of Leaving Cert students’ grades have been adjusted upwards by exam authorities to bring them into line with last year’s record-high set of results.
It follows a pledge from Minister for Education Norma Foley to ensure grades are “no lower” than last year in order to ensure students are not disadvantaged when competing with the class of 2021.
Just over 61,000 Leaving Cert students received their results on Friday morning.
However, the move to keep grade inflation at last year’s high level has sparked calls from university leaders for a return to normality as soon as possible in order to protect the integrity of the Leaving Cert.
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Prof Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, University of Galway president, said inflated grades were doing an “injustice” to students because it was harder for colleges to identify top students for high-point courses.
Read more on the Leaving Cert
- Full coverage of Leaving Cert 2022
- How to understand the new points system
- Advice, options and what next: irishtimes.com coverage of the results
- Five takeaways from Leaving Cert 2022
- What should you do if you didn’t get the results you expected?
- University president calls for end to grade inflation
As a result, universities may have to use random selection across many high-point courses when CAO round one offers are released on Thursday, September 8th.
The State Examinations Commission used a “postmarking intervention” to increase all students’ marks to bring them into line with the 2021 set of results.
This adjusted students’ marks upwards by about 5.6 per cent on average over the results they secured in their marked exams.
This led to an increase in about 50 per cent of students’ grades this year.
The scale of the adjustment was greater among lower marks and smaller among higher marks in order to match last year’s results.
Before the pandemic
It means this year’s students will match last year’s record haul of top grades which were, on average, about 60 points higher than results secured before the pandemic.
For example, there is a record-equalling proportion of H1 grades at higher level this year — 14 per cent — which is between two and three times the level achieved before Covid-19.
The State Examinations Commission said the adjustment process this year was “fair and equitable” to all candidates and had been reviewed internally and externally by experts from Education Testing Services and Trinity College Dublin.
Ms Foley congratulated students receiving their results today.
“Congratulations to one and all of you,” she said. “You have reached this significant milestone in your education journey and that alone is an enormous achievement.”
