As predicted, leaving certificate results have shot up this year under the new calculated grades system compared to last year.
Compulsory subjects all saw bumps in the number of highest grades awarded. In Irish, the the number of H1s this year went up from 6.1 per cent last year to 9.1 per cent. H1s in English increased from 3 per cent to 4.3 per cent, and H1s awarded in mathematics increased 2 per cent from 6.4 per cent to 8.4 per cent.
The number of H1s awarded in other popular subjects such as German, French Spanish, history and geography also increased. Science and business subjects all saw considerable bumps.
Smaller subjects in particular saw major increases in the number of H1s awarded. The number of H1s in applied mathematics increased from 16.5 per cent to 29.6 per cent. Some 22.7 per cent of students were awarded H1 in Japanese, compared to 9.1 per cent last year. The number of music students awarded a H1 shot up from 4.3 to 13 per cent this year. Polish saw a massive increase in H1s from 8.3 to 36.3.
Students will receive their CAO offers on Friday. The thousands of applicants who sat their leaving certificate last year are set to take a major hit points wise, as the higher grades this year inflate the points necessary to enter college courses.
In a letter to leaving certificate students, Minister for Education Norma Foley acknowledged that recent months had been “a challenging time” for them.
“This is a very different day from what we had anticipated for you, and from what you had planned and dreamed for yourselves”, she wrote. “I do appreciate what an especially difficult time you have had over the past six months, and I want to commend you for the patience, courage and resilience you have shown in that time.”
She added that the calculated grades system was devised “to ensure there would be a mechanism to enable the class of 2020 to progress to work or further and higher education on completion of your second level school experience”.
Foley said that the system was “the fairest possible solution given the extraordinary circumstances in which we find ourselves”.
In May, the government announced that this year’s leaving certificate exams would not take place and that students would be given the option to receive calculated grades or sit their exams at a later date.
The calculated grades were awarded to students on the basis of a number of factors – such as class rankings, students’ performance in previous assessments and other indicators.
A National Standardisation Group combined the information provided by schools with other information in a process of national standardisation. According to the department, high value was placed on the estimates of performance coming from schools in this process, with adjustments made only where teachers and schools were believed to have over or under-estimated.
The vast majority of students achieved the grades assigned to them by their schools, with no change of grade in 79.2 per cent of cases, and 83.1 per cent of all grades either the same or higher than school estimates.
