Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said that the “preferred option” for this year’s leaving certificate is a mix of a calculated grades system and a written exam.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Martin said the government wanted to give students options, while also pushing for some form of written exam.
The Irish Examiner has also reported that a subcommittee of the cabinet will discuss three leading options for the leaving certificate – a hybrid of calculated grades and written exams, a fully calculated grade model, an option “based on more open access to further and higher education” – and that a final decision will be made later this week.
“Some students want the grades process that we did last year,” the Taoiseach said.
“Some don’t want to sit an exam, some do. The hybrid model is one approach, the calculated grades is another.”
“However, if you’re closing that option of getting back into the classroom, then that puts pressure on the capacity to have the written exam.”
The leaving certificate was a thorn in the side of Minister for Education Norma Foley in 2020, and this year is no different.
Last month, Foley had to u-turn on plans to allow sixth-year students into school three days a week, after teachers’ unions threatened to revolt.
She has maintained, however, that the leaving certificate will go ahead in person.
In a press conference on January 7th, the minister said that leaving certificate exams were “successfully” run in November, “without a hitch, without a glitch”.
In May, the government announced that the 2020 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.
Leaving certificate results shot up as a result under the new calculated grades system compared to the previous 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.
Due to a coding error, however, thousands of students were awarded incorrect grades, leading the government to offer students a place in a course they originally missed out on, if their new grades met the requirements for that course.
In a press statement at the time, Minister for Education Norma Foley said: “I want to say how sorry I am that this has happened. My immediate priority is to fix the errors and their consequences so that students get their correct grades.”
