Leaving Cert results: Will 2025 students be badly disadvantaged by grade deflation?

Irish Times

10 hours ago

Leaving Cert results are coming out on Friday. Those who sat the exams this year are concerned they will be at a disadvantage as grades are set to be 'deflated' from the bumper marks awarded after the Covid pandemic.
How many students applying for a CAO place this year sat the exams in 2025 and how many sat the Leaving Cert in previous years?
Some 51,350 students who will receive their 2025 Leaving Cert results on Friday morning have applied to the CAO for a place in a third-level college this year. A total of 19,782 former Leaving Cert students who did the examination in previous years have also applied for a place this year. The vast majority of them completed their second-level education since 2020. They therefore constitute 28 per cent of all (71,132) Leaving Cert applicants in 2025.
How did Leaving Cert grades get inflated in recent years?
It stems back to the Covid pandemic and the abandonment of the written exams in 2020 amid health lockdowns. Instead of the usual Leaving Cert, teachers were asked to predict what their students might have achieved if they had had the opportunity to sit the exams in person. The SEC ended up giving much more generous grades, up 4.4 percentage points on aggregate from 2019 levels.
A year later grades climbed higher still – a further 2.6 percentage points – when students had a choice of predicted grades or written exams – which very few took. This raised students' exam results upwards, on aggregate, by about 7 percentage points in 2021 over results achieved by students two years previously, before Covid in 2019.
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Grades have been adjusted upwards by on average of 7 per cent through what authorities call a 'postmarking adjustment' since 2022. This has been achieved by marking exam papers as normal and then, when the process is complete, adding further marks to all papers to ensure overall grades match the tally from 2020 and 2021, on aggregate.
Why should this be of concern to the Leaving Cert class of 2025 who are seeking a CAO place?
A 7 per cent average increase might not sound like much, but the effect of these increases has been considerable, especially for those taking higher-level subjects. For example, authorities previously estimated that a student who achieved 512 CAO points in 2019 would have been awarded about 550 points on foot of these upward adjustments over recent years.
Does that mean students who deferred applying until this year have an advantage in accessing college places?
The plan is that a 'postmarking adjustment' applied to students' grades on aggregate this year will reduce from 7 per cent to 5.5 per cent. In other words, students' grades will be lower, on aggregate, compared with the bumper grades achieved over the past four years.
In 2023 the percentage of originally marked scripts which went up one grade was 70 per cent. In 2024 it was 68 per cent. The crucial number to look out for on Friday will be the percentage of grades which are adjusted upwards through the 5.5 per cent process.
A significant proportion of the 32 per cent of grades which were not adjusted upwards in 2024 and in 2023 is due to the fact that the student in question had already been awarded the top grade on either the higher or ordinary paper by the correcting teacher.
How might this be reflected in CAO points?
The practical implication of the change downwards in the adjusted marks will be that a student who achieved about 550 points on foot of enhanced grades last year could expect to receive about 538 points in 2025.
If it's going to negatively affect the chances of the class of 2025, why are we deflating grades at all?
Firstly, the credibility of the Leaving Cert internationally cannot be sustained if we do not stop enhancing our grades.
Secondly, higher-education institutions have complained that it is difficult to differentiate between candidates with high grades for some courses because so many are getting top marks.
This has led to an increase in the use of random selection – a lottery – to choose candidates, especially in highly competitive courses such as medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and others.
Inflated grades have also made it much more difficult for students from Northern Ireland to access university here, as grades in the UK have since returned to normal levels. Yet they are competing against students with higher grades in the Republic.
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Carl O'Brien: 'Why grade deflation for Leaving Cert students might not be such a bad thing'
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In light of these factors, among others, Minister for Education Helen McEntee has pledged to begin what her officials have described as a 'glide path' back to pre-Covid results over the course of a few years.
Will the grade deflation lead to a fall in CAO points overall?
It is difficult to say for sure. There are several factors that can influence the entry cut-off point for the CAO's round one offers in late August. They include the number of places on offer across individual courses, the demand for these places and the points achieved by applicants.
With 51,350 CAO applicants set to achieve lower points this year, it seems likely that CAO entry points should drop overall.
If, for example, 72 per cent of applicants in the CAO round one offers have one grade less than in the past five years and 28 per cent retain their existing 'bumper' grades, then – all things remaining equal – there should be a modest easing of points requirements for courses.
But then again, all things are not equal. Some courses have increased in popularity, putting upward pressure on CAO points, while others have fallen out of fashion, leading to an easing of points requirements.
Minister for Higher Education James Lawless has also funded additional places in many high-demand courses for 2025 and 2026 to ease the pressure on CAO points.
Was there a fairer way of deflating grades and protecting the class of 2025?
One option, in theory, is that the higher-education institutions – which own and manage the CAO application system – could ringfence a proportion of college places for the class of 2025 only.
To do this fairly, this option would require very detailed data analysis on the part of every college and would entail a huge administrative task.
Could the SEC adjust the inflated results of students with bumper grades from recent years downwards, so they match the class of 2025?
As a technical exercise, yes. Leaving Cert students from 2022, 2023 and 2024 had their exam papers marked normally, after which a postmarking adjustment of 7 per cent was made to bring them into line with inflated Covid-era 2020 and 2021 grades. Those original marks and grades are retained by the SEC.
These applicants could, in theory, be allocated CAO points based on their lower pre-adjusted grades. (Their published Leaving Cert would continue to be recognised as their official result; but their unadjusted grades would count for CAO application purposes in the future.)
If this was done, there would have been no need for postmarking adjustments from this year.
Using this method to amend the results of students who were awarded a Leaving Cert in 2020 and 2021 is not possible, but most of these students are now aged 23 or older and can apply to the CAO as 'mature applicants' where they are considered on the basis of their life experience to date and not on the basis of their Leaving Cert grades.
Why did we not do this to be fair to the class of 2025?
Sources have indicated that the advice to the Government from the Attorney General's office was that such a decision to return to the pre-adjusted grades for the classes of 2022-2024 for CAO application processes in the future was legally problematic as students who received enhanced grades had an entitlement to retain the actual grades awarded and their value in perpetuity for CAO application purposes.
This advice may or may not be tested in the courts in the coming weeks. But it would be a brave judge who would declare the method of allocating college places for the entire 2025 first-year undergraduate CAO system unfair or invalid.