Leaving Cert grades up average 7.5% this year

course difficulty isn’t done on points though it’s done on demand/space.

Getting to third level is now at risk of becoming a lottery rather than merit based, well for popular courses anyway.

Except for those who were already at the top and can't be boosted any further.

Something that was never a concern of mine admittedly, but does impact some people.

The whole thing should be done by percentiles across the board - gets around inflation and can make international/year-on-year comparison much easier

Points are based on supply and demand. However, at universities there will be distribution of grades within these courses also. Given that all the students in a 600+ course are extremely able, they would tend to pick up the pace to achieve that distribution.

Exactly, the leaving cert grade fiasco is just a sad reflection of the economy. Hand out lots to one group of people and you screw it up for everyone.

Leaving cert was never about how well you perform, but how well you perform relative to everyone else. This nonsense figure they give of 7.5% just means that it will 7.5% be harder to get into your course this year than it was last year. Wait til you see, they will just increase the college point requirement accordingly, or let the college's take everyone's money and let them drop out after a year as you say.

Although, with an election this year, Norma Foley won't want to be rattling any cages.

How about citizens of NI or UK who want to apply through our CAO system?

Or RofI students applying for places in the UK and elsewhere?

Former at disadvantage, latter with potential advantage.

Grade inflation in the LC is very bad:

https://x.com/seamuscoffey/status/1435249385441579013

Here is the same data including 2021:

This is sort of what I'm going back to. I wouldn't have gotten very high leaving points and really struggled with it tbh. So I scraped into the course I wanted, did great educationally after that though cause I did courses that suited me.

Nearly fifteen years on and my leaving cert results have no relevance. I hire people and graduates tend to get questions related to college material and beyond even that. It's tech so I'd aim to hire based on actual interest in the area. I'm sure they include leaving cert results in lots of the CVs but it doesn't really hold a whole lot of relevance.

Obviously there are certain courses that need very specific subjects and ability at them. But plenty just need some interview process and application system. Equally there's a factor that loads of teens have no idea where their interests lie. So I think there's a lot of logic in the liberal arts flow for those scenarios too.

would it be an expectation that course points could drop 10% in next years CAO round - a course that was 390 in 2019 could be 440 now as a result of Covid rankings.

I'm not justifying the boosting of grades. My point was that this is the same as last year so points will not go up because of this, they are already up.

If A levels have not had such a boost, then the A level equivalence can be adjusted to reflect this.

No, that is exactly how courses work when they hit 625 points - random selection. Also used for the final places if there are multiple applicants on the same points.

You are allocated a number (in the background, you don't get to know it) when you sign up for CAO that is used to decide placing in random selection.

this is what happens when you endless political interference in a system. Same going on the consumer/financial side of our lives

absolutely- the LC was a “hard” exam then and it could be (very) brutal. But it reflected real life and the hard work and sacrifices needed to get ahead.
Now the focus is all about “fairness” etc. Which is an illusion- we can only grow and prosper from overcoming difficult situations and challenges

True ...but that wouldn't fly nowadays

Can you imagine the whinging, complaining and gnashing of teeth from the mammys and daddy's and the mental stress on the students and the even greater cries of LC not even relevant etc etc if they actually had to apply themselves to get average grades...

Much better to give most participants rubber medals and tell them all they are great altogether....less resistance....a sizeable proportion of people don't want things to be difficult...they don't subscribe to worthwhile things requiring any great effort, they want things and they want it now and they get upset if it doesn't work out that way and blame anyone or anything before taking a look at themselves if they don't get it.....

I want it, I want it now, it should be easy and require almost no input from me and if I don't get it then that must be everyone else's fault in some way....

It's ironic they often look up to successful people but it never occurs to them that the majority of those people sacrificed and worked hard to get where they are...they want the glory without what it requires ...its instant gratification is what's required...and the system/politicians flunkies of all sorts are reactive by nature and tend to give in to a degree to those that whip up the most noise....media is happy to fill the airwaves with a percentage of horseshit too

The process of realising you are mostly responsible for yourself happens later and later now in life....there are more infantilised man and women children wandering around now than there ever were.