Record 140,457 sit Leaving, Junior and other state exams starting today
The State Examinations Commission (SEC) said the record number of candidates was 'linked to demographic increases, with the numbers entered passing 140,000 for the first time'.
The number entered to take the 2025 certificate examinations has increased by 3pc (up 4,297) compared with last year's entry figure of 136,160 candidates, with the most significant increases in the numbers entered for the Leaving Cert programme (5pc) and Leaving Cert Applied programme (up 11pc).
Of those sitting state exams, 61,632 are Leaving Cert candidates, 4,512 are final-year Leaving Cert Applied (LCA) candidates and 74,313 are Junior Cycle candidates.
Education Minister Helen McEntee said: 'I want to send the very best wishes to all the students around the country who are starting their Leaving Certificate, Leaving Certificate Applied and Junior Cycle examinations today.
'I know the amount of work and effort you have put in to reach this point. It is the culmination of many years of effort.
'This can be a very stressful time, so I would remind everyone that when it comes to examinations, all we can do is our best.
An extensive logistical exercise involving the secure distribution of about four million exam papers to the examination superintendents
'We are all very much behind you over the next few weeks and I know that, regardless of the outcome of these examinations, there will be many great opportunities ahead for you all.'
Students are set to sit exams in more than 800 centres nationwide, including post-primary schools and other locations.
Delivery of the state examinations is an extensive logistical exercise involving the secure distribution of about four million exam papers to the examination superintendents responsible for overseeing written exams.
The exams will run from today until June 24 for Leaving Cert (Established and Vocational); June 12 for Leaving Cert Applied; and June 16 for Junior Cycle exams.
The SEC will apply a post-marking adjustment for the 2025 Leaving Cert examinations, once tests are completed, 'in order to bring the overall Leaving Certificate results in the aggregate on average to a point broadly midway between the 2020 and 2021 levels'.
The SEC said it aimed to issue the 2025 Leaving Cert and Leaving Cert Applied examination results to candidates on August 22.
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Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
‘I'm not even a bit stressed,' Honor goes, ‘I haven't done a focking tap for these exams'
Sorcha thinks we should maybe check on Honor and there's an air of definite excitement in her voice when she says it? Yeah, no, it's the night before the stort of the Leaving Cert and my wife is absolutely determined that this should be one of those mother-daughter moments. She goes, 'The Leaving Cert puts – oh my God – so much pressure on young people. But it's not the be-all and end-all. I read an orticle online about all the famous people who failed the Leaving Cert.' I'm there, ' I failed the Leaving Cert – in fairness to me.' She's like, 'I'm talking about people who went on to actually achieve things?' READ MORE And I'm there, 'Yeah, no, thanks for that, Sorcha.' 'I just remember that – oh my God – my Mom had this amazing, amazing talk with me the night before I storted mine ? She just said, you know, the importance of exams is, like, totally overblown and that the Leaving Cert shouldn't define you for the rest of your life.' 'That's easy for you to say. Didn't you get, like, maximum points?' 'Well, not quite maximum points? I got, like, a B in Honours English, remember?' How could I forget? Her old man spent years appealing it. I think the case was still trundling through the courts when she was pregnant with Honor. 'Come on,' she goes, 'let's go and talk to her,' and I follow her up the stairs to Honor's room. Sorcha knocks and she's like, 'Honor, dorling?' then she pushes the door and looks around it like she's sticking her head in a lion's mouth. Honor isn't studying. That's the first thing I notice. She's sorting through her wardrobe and taking photographs of herself in various outfits with one hand on her hip and her cheeks sucked in. Sorcha goes, 'We're sorry to bother you, Honor. We were just wondering how the study was going?' I don't know where she's getting this we from? Honor's like, 'It's going great – as you can probably see.' 'Well,' Sorcha goes, 'we just wanted to say that, even though it may seem like it now, the Leaving Certificate is not the be-all and end-all.' I'm there, 'I'm living proof of that, Honor.' But Sorcha's like, 'Why don't you leave the talking to me, Ross? What we're trying to say, Honor – and I'm echoing my own mother's words here – is that it doesn't define you as, like, a person ?' Honor's there, 'Why do I buy so many clothes in taupe? It looks so focking meh on me.' Sorcha goes, 'The important thing – as my mom famously said – is that you turn out a happy, well-adjusted girl with a fully functioning moral compass.' Honor's like, 'Does this top make my face look washed out? You can tell me.' [ Honor goes, 'I'm editing the school yearbook photographs of anyone who pissed me off' Opens in new window ] 'What I'm saying,' Sorcha goes, 'is that our results-focused secondary education system sometimes forgets that schools have a role to play in preparing young people for life and not just exams.' 'I hate all my focking clothes.' 'I was just thinking back to my own Leaving Cert – wasn't I, Ross? At the time, I thought it was the most important thing in the world. But if you were to ask me what did I get in, say, Maths or History now, I'd have to actually rack my brains.' 'Didn't you get As in everything?' Honor goes. I'm like, 'Except English – and her old man spent eight years in the courts trying get her B upgraded.' Honor gives her one of her crocodile smiles and goes, 'So much for results not being important. Anyway, for your information, I'm not even a bit stressed?' I'm like, 'Oh, that's good – isn't it, Sorcha?' And Sorcha's there, 'Er, yeah – I suppose it is.' 'As a matter of fact,' Honor goes, 'I haven't done a focking tap for these exams.' And I'm like, 'I'm going to say fair focks to you, Honor. I think I speak for both of us when I say you've put our minds at ease. Come on, Sorcha, let's leave her to it.' But Sorcha's mind isn't at ease? Outside on the landing, she goes, 'What do you think she meant when she said she hasn't done a tap?' I'm there, 'Excuse me?' 'Like, did she mean it in the same way that I used to say it? Look, I'm not saying I was a secret studier – which is what all the girls used to say about me – but I was, like, naturally bright and I had an amazing, amazing memory.' 'Again, fair focks.' [ Honor is staring at Brett like he's an ATM and she's sitting in a JCB, trying to work the levers Opens in new window ] 'Or was she saying that she hasn't done a tap in the same way that – no offence, Ross – you didn't do a tap, as in, like, literally?' 'What does it matter? The important thing is that she's a happy girl with a fully functioning whatever-you-said.' 'Yes, Ross – but within reason.' 'Within reason?' 'I mean, it's also important that she gets into a good college. And into a degree course that's, like, high points.' 'But I thought you said–' 'Never mind what I said. What the fock is she doing in there?' 'I think she was questioning some of her 2024 wardrobe choices.' She goes, 'Did she even have a book open?' and before I can answer no, she bursts into Honor's room again, with no knock this time, and she's like, 'Why aren't you studying?' Honor goes, 'Excuse me?' Sorcha's there, 'You have an exam tomorrow! Where are your books? Where are your cog notes?' [ 'That picture The Last Supper is weird. They're all sitting on the same side of the table' Opens in new window ] Honor's like, 'I thought you said the Leaving Cert doesn't matter.' Sorcha goes, 'I didn't mean it literally doesn't matter. Oh my God, what happens in the next fortnight is going to shape the rest of your life, Honor! What are you going to do if you don't get into college? Stort an OnlyFans account? Live on the streets? Become a ketamine addict?' Honor looks her in the eye and goes, 'I have to leave the exam an hour early tomorrow. I have, like, a nails appointment?' Sorcha ends up totally flipping out and I have to put my orm around her shoulder and escort her out of there like my old dear being helped out of the prosecco tent at Bloom. She's like, 'You might be fine with having a daughter who fails her Leaving Cert, Ross, but I am not.'
Irish Examiner
10 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Séamas O'Reilly: Many of the tropes of standard Irishness are not universally applied both sides of the border
You might be expecting me, a topical columnist, to give you, the schoolchildren of Ireland, a timely pep talk about the Leaving Cert exams you've just started, perhaps with a stirring tale from my own experience. Sadly, I can't do that because I never did the Leaving Cert. I was raised in Derry, and thus the British school system, so I did A-levels. They are, I'm sure, similar enough to the Leaving Cert that much of my advice would still be relevant, but still different enough that it wouldn't really make much sense to apply them directly to the exams you're sitting now. Such are the slightly odd contradictions of being raised in Northern Ireland and discovering, over many years, that many of the full-fat tropes of standard Irishness are not universally applied both sides of the border. I should be clear up-front that I've never felt any neurosis about this. It would, I suppose, take a lot for someone named Séamas O'Reilly to gain a complex about being insufficiently Irish. Sometimes, however, these complexes are thrust in front of me. Rarely, however, in London, where few locals know, or care, the difference between north and south. Here, it's mostly had a simplifying effect, where I might as well be from Tallaght, Togher, or Twomileborris, if they had any clue where those places were. No, here it's my status as an undercover Brit that surprises people, and has even granted me the opportunity to shock unsuspecting Londoners with my deep knowledge of BBC radio comedy, or British cultural products of our shared yesteryear. More deliciously still, it's also allowed me to correct them when they've called me an immigrant, usually with the attendant undertone that I should complain less about my gracious hosts. When, this week, the Telegraph printed a rabidly scaremongering report that 'White British people will be a minority in 40 years', they clarified this cohort as 'the white British share of the population — defined as people who do not have an immigrant parent'. Leaving aside how garbled that formulation is — there are millions of non-white Brits who meet that definition perfectly — it carried with it a parallel consequence. I myself do not have an immigrant parent. In fact, every single pale and freckled ancestor of mine since 1800, Irish farmers to a soul, was born and raised in something called the United Kingdom. This is true for a large number of Irish people in the North. And since the late Prince Philip was himself a Greek immigrant, it gives me great pleasure to point out that they'd settled on a definition of 'White British' which includes Gerry Adams but excludes King Charles III. The only people who've ever questioned my Irishness — to my face — are other Irish people, admittedly rarely, and almost always in the form of gentle ribbing from the sort of pub comedians who call their straight-haired friend 'Curly'. The type who're fond of hearing me say 'Derry' and asking, reflexively, whether I mean 'Londonderry'. In the time-honoured tradition of any Derry person who's encountered this comment — oh, five or six million times in their life — I simply laugh it off and say I've heard that one before. Similarly, if some irrepressible wit asks a Derry person whether we're in the IRA, we'll tell them that's quite an offensive stereotype, while also peppering the rest of our conversation with vague, disconcerting comments designed to imply that we might indeed be members of a paramilitary organisation and that they should, therefore, stop talking to us. For the most part, I regard my British birth certificate and UK-system schooling as a mundane quirk of my fascinating personal biography. I am, in fact, confident enough in my identity that tabulating concrete differences between the North and South has simply become something of a hobby. The Leaving Cert is one such mystery. I gather that it involves every student in Ireland taking tests in about 760 subjects, crammed into the same time I was given to learn four. And that you must take Irish throughout the entirety of your schooling, so that you can emerge from 13 straight years of daily instruction in the language, cursing the fact you never got a chance to learn it. I know, vaguely, that some part of this learning involves a book about — by? — a woman named Peig, and that the very mention of her name inspires tens of thousands of Irish people my age to speak in tones of awe, nostalgia, mockery and reverence, always in English. Of course, almost all facets of the Irish school system are exotic to me. I feel that no finer term has ever been coined for small children than 'senior infants' but I've no idea what age it could possibly apply to. I know that there is such a thing as a transition year, but not what that means, precisely, still less what it's for. I know that summer holidays are different, namely that they're longer than what we get up North. I primarily know this because I grew up on the border and suffered the cruel indignity of marching off to school each June, in full sight of my friends eight feet away in Donegal, who seemed to have summer holidays that lasted about eight months of the year. I was told, perhaps erroneously, that this period of glorious leisure stems from the days when kids were expected to be at home on the farm, and the school calendar augmented so as to enable the nation-sustaining pyramid of child labour this demanded. I saw no sign of this in the few kids I'd spy from the bus window as I was conveyed to class, idling on deck chairs and inflating beach balls in the driving rain. Know that you have this glorious reward in your near future, if you're worried about the exams you've just begun. I hope the few you've started have already gone well. Take solace. Be unafraid. By my count, there's just 740 more to go. Read More Colm O'Regan: Cleaning the house can both spark joy and cause a panic
Irish Independent
15 hours ago
- Irish Independent
ASTI votes down Leaving Cert reform package
The package related to teachers and their conditions of employment and apply only to those teachers who become parties to the agreement. The ASTI, in a separate ballot, voted 67pc to 33pc in favour of industrial action 'if necessary, up to and including strike action, in opposition to the accelerated implementation of the Senior Cycle Redevelopment Programme'. Education Minister Helen McEntee said: 'Despite the positive engagement between the ASTI, the TUI and my Department in the recent negotiations, the ASTI's membership have voted not to accept this strong package of supports for teachers, schools and students on offer.' Despite the ASTI voting against this package, changes to senior cycle are still set to go ahead. Under the terms of the Public Service Agreement, ASTI members have committed to cooperating with Senior Cycle Redevelopment. In addition, in engagements before the ballot process, the ASTI confirmed to Department officials that their members will teach the new and revised specifications from the next school year. Minister McEntee added: 'As I confirmed in April, the implementation of the programme will continue with the introduction of the first tranche of new and revised Leaving Certificate subjects in September 2025 as previously announced. 'From the very outset, the Senior Cycle Redevelopment programme has been motivated by the needs of our students. "The world is rapidly changing and it is important that we equip students with the skills they will need to succeed and to thrive when they finish school.' In the coming days, the Department will seek to engage with the leadership of the Teachers' Union of Ireland as it proceeds to implement the support measures. ASTI General Secretary Kieran Christie said: 'ASTI research published in 2025 shows that a key concern is the lack of resources and capacity in schools to introduce such radical change in an effective manner. "Furthermore, the supports on offer do little to provide a Senior Cycle experience for all students that addresses the core inequalities that are in place in the second-level system."
