Reversing grade inflation remains an ongoing challenge

The ghost of the pandemic continues to echo around school halls. For the fifth year in a row, students have received significantly higher grades than previous years. In 2020, with the exams cancelled and students receiving estimated grades from their teachers, the number of higher marks soared, pulling CAO points up with them.
Senior academics in higher education institutions have complained that students are entering college with inflated grades that leave them unprepared for the particular challenges of college.
But unwinding the process has proven difficult, because it would disadvantage the current set of students compared with those who sat the exam between 2020 and 2024 and who may have deferred a college place.
Keeping things as they are, however, means that students who sat the exams before the pandemic are at a disadvantage, and the grades are not an accurate reflection of their work.
Despite this, the Minister for Education, Norma Foley, has said grades should gradually begin to return to normal next year – but that’s after the election, and a new minister may be in place then and reluctant to grasp this nettle.
About 80 per cent of the class of 2024 completed transition year and, because of the pandemic, did not sit the junior cycle exams. For them, it is their first set of State exams results.
This year, a total of 60,839 candidates received Leaving Cert results, with 56,791 of these sitting the established Leaving Cert programme and 4,048 sitting the Leaving Cert Applied (LCA).
The number of students sitting the LCA has risen this year, by a relatively significant 8.5 per cent. This may be because the concurrent growth of Post-Leaving Cert, apprenticeship and traineeship courses means that, relative to five years ago, CAO points have become less important.
With senior cycle reform on the education agenda, many have pointed to the LCA, which places a greater emphasis on life skills and vocational skills than terminal exams, as a model worth exploring.
In addition, the National Tertiary Office – although its name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue – now offers students an additional route to third-level outside the CAO process, with courses beginning as a PLC at a college of further education in year one before automatically transferring to a higher education institution in their second year.
For all the annual hype about exam results and the competition for high-demand college courses, the opening up and expansion of new routes to further and higher education means that students have more choice and routes to education than ever before.
Still, students and educators, for different reasons, will be paying close attention to the individual and collective results.
So, to the big question: are grades up, down or about the same as last year? Bear in mind that, in any given year, there is always some degree of fluctuation but, until 2020 at least, this has tended to be within a given range. All bets have been off since then. This year, however, an analysis of grades suggests that there is a slight, subtle downward trend in marks awarded in many subjects, with others staying relatively steady.
The Irish curriculum is often panned. If we spend 14 years in school learning the language, why are we, collectively, still so bad at it?
But this belies that Irish consistently has the highest number of top grades outside minority languages and music – subjects that tend to attract students who are already reasonably skilled.
Last year, 15.7 per cent of students received a H1, a rise of 3 percentage points from 2022. In 2024, there’s some indication of a slight downward trend: 14.1 per cent of students received a H1.
Meanwhile, 19.9 per cent received a H2, down from 21.8 per cent the previous year, while 23.7 per cent secured a H3 both this year and last year.
Top ordinary-level grades are down from 2.3 per cent in 2023 to 1.5 per cent this year, O2 grades are down from 13.5 per cent to 9.7 per cent and O3 grades fell from 24.6 per cent to 22.4 per cent.
At higher level, just 0.2 per cent received a H8 grade – this is considered a “fail” and no points are awarded.
Students are often simplistically divided into those who prefer English and those who prefer maths. Those who prefer maths may have an advantage, as English remains one of the hardest subjects to get a H1 in, perhaps because marking schemes have always struggled to capture the subjective nature of good or bad writing. Conversely, however, English has one of the lower failure rates: maths may be more black and white, but that also makes it easier to get wrong.
This year, 6.9 per cent secured top marks in English, compared with 7.5 per cent last year. A total of 17.5 per cent secured a H2 and 29.3 per cent a H3 compared with, respectively, 17.4 per cent and 29 per cent in 2023. Just 0.2 per cent failed.
At ordinary level, a total of 49.9 per cent received an O1, O2 or O3, compared with 50.5 per cent last year.
The reintroduction of bonus points for higher level maths in 2012 has had a big impact on the numbers taking the subject and, of course, on CAO points. Every student who gets a H6 or higher gets these valuable 25 extra points, which can make all the difference.
Last year, H1s dropped significantly, from 18.1 per cent to 11.2 per cent. This year, however, the number of H1s is up to 12.6 per cent.
Overall, an impressive 96.6 per cent of all students who sat the higher-level paper will receive the full 25 bonus points.
For ordinary-level students, the number of O1s is up for the second year in a row, this time rising from 9.8 per cent to 11.6 per cent.
This year, 56.5 per cent of higher-level history students received a H1, H2 or H3, compared with 56.4 per cent last year.
In biology, 50.4 per cent of higher-level students received a H1, H2 or H3, compared with 51.9 per cent last year.
A total of 55.6 per cent of geography students received one of the top three grades, compared with 55.7 per cent in 2023.
In French, 56.3 per cent of students secured a H1, H2, or H3, compared with 55.8 per cent last year.