The State Examinations Commission (SEC) released the results of the class of 2025’s Leaving Certificate Examination. The Leaving Cert is the final exam for secondary school students in Ireland, and is central to obtaining admission to higher education through the Central Applications Office (CAO) system. Trinity College Dublin is among the universities students may be admitted to through the Leaving Cert.
Results this year have (expectedly) fallen due to an effort by the government and the SEC to gradually deflate results after grade inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the SEC, H1 grades are down to 11.7% from 14.3% in 2024. However, before the pandemic, H1s composed between 5 and 6 per cent of all marks.
Post-marking adjustment, an initiative in place since 2020, still applied to exams in 2025, but more modestly. 52.4% of marks increased this year, though 68% increased in 2024 and 71% increased in 2023. The added boost from post-marking adjustment averaged 6.8% and is applied on a sliding linear scale. In 2024, the top boost was 12.1% tapering to 4.8%, whereas in 2025, the top boost was 10.3% tapering to 3.1%.
The long-term goal of this deflation is to bring scores back to pre-pandemic standards. This gradual adjustment has been characterised as a “glide” rather than a “cliff-edge” drop according to the SEC. Minister for Education Helen McEntee, in a statement to RTÉ, said, “You have even more students that are in a lottery. Because we’ve seen an inflation, we’ve seen more higher grades, and it’s actually pushed up the points. You have students who’ve worked so hard, they’ve gotten points, they’ve actually not gotten the course then because there are too many people competing for it”. The deflation also raises concern, however, as students from previous years applying in 2025 are advantaged by higher levels of inflation compared to the class of 2025.
There was record participation in this year’s Leaving Cert, with 65,444 students sitting the exams, up 7.4% from 2024. The most likely reason for the increase in participation in 2025 is population growth. 2007, the birth year for most students sitting the Leaving Cert this year, represents the year with the highest population growth in Ireland in over 60 years at 2.9%.
