Twice as many Leaving Cert students have results withheld over cheating – The Irish Times
The number of students whose Leaving Certificate and Leaving Cert Applied results were permanently withheld this year because…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #ArtificialIntelligence #IE #Ireland #LeavingCertificate #state-examinations-commission-sec
https://www.newsbeep.com/96736/
A Day of Offerings
Today (27th August) is the day that students across Ireland receive offers of places at Third-Level Institutions to start next month. The offers for all courses and all institutions are available on the official CAO website here; they are also widely available elsewhere, including this searchable list.
The official numbers for Maynooth are here. Minimum points required for Maynooth’s – and indeed Ireland’s – most important course, MH206 Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, are 520 this year, up a little from 513 last year. MH204 Physics with Astrophysics is 385, up two points on last year’s 383. MH201 General Science (of which Physics is a part) is on 352 points, up two from 350 last year. Just for comparison, the points for these courses from 10 years ago were: MH206 550; MH204 480; and MH201 435, all significantly higher than this year.
Maynooth’s biggest course (by student numbers) – and indeed the biggest course in Ireland reckoned that way – is the Omnibus Arts programme MH101 which has an entry level this year of just 300 CAO points. Ten years ago it was 390.
It seems the first-round entry points for most courses at Maynooth have not changed dramatically despite the reduction in Leaving Certificate grades this year after several years of artificial inflation over the Covid-19 years. Leaving Certificate results are just one factor in determining the CAO points for a particular course at a particular Institution. Overall the picture is rather complex. Across Ireland, points are up for about 50% of courses and down for about 42%. The CAO points needed for a course is largely a matter of demand versus capacity rather than academic performance. For the last few years Maynooth University has been recruiting more and more students, putting pressure on accommodation, teaching loads and campus space. This strategy will prevent any significant rise in CAO points for the foreseeable future. This is probably happening to some extent across the sector, though Maynooth has a more urgent need for more students: to pay for the legions of new managers it has appointed. Two new €100K managerial jobs have been advertised so far this week…
All this just concerns the first round of offers so things may change significantly over the next week or two. Students now have to decide whether to accept their first-round offer or try to change course. They have until next week to do this. Departments won’t know how many new students they have for a while yet.
#CAO #CAOOffers #LeavingCertificate #MaynoothUniversity #MH101 #MH201 #MH204 #MH206
CAO college offers: Everything you need to know
The class of 2025 should enjoy their achievement first, but here is a look at what happens next…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #CAOPoints #IE #Ireland #LeavingCertificate
https://www.newsbeep.com/86208/
‘I fell 11 points short of the course I wanted and went down the PLC route’ – The Irish Times
Two years ago, when she opened her Leaving Cert results, Amy Moore (20) learned she had narrowly missed…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #c-c #classroom-to-college #IE #Ireland #LeavingCertificate #second-level #smart-choices #students #third-level
https://www.newsbeep.com/83003/
Grades deflate as students get results and number of H1s fall – The Irish Times
Just over 65,000 students received their Leaving Cert results this morning. These are the first to see their…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #helen-mcentee #IE #Ireland #LeavingCertificate #student-hub #students
https://www.newsbeep.com/76304/
Moving On
Last week I wrote a post about the loose ends of the academic year, one of which concerned my PhD student Aoibhinn, who passed her viva voce examination way back in May, who had to submit a bound copy of the thesis to the relevant office by September 6th so that her degree could be ratified by Faculty and Academic Council. She has now done that, and in the process kindly made me an extra copy of the Authorized Version to put on my shelf:
It will be easy to find on my shelf because it’s a different colour from the others. Aoibhinn will be off to Germany for a postdoctoral fellowship after her conferring ceremony in October.
In subsequent post I mentioned a plethora of meetings to take place this week, all of which went off without much incident. The various Departmental Examination Boards did their business and students will receive their results on September 5th. Students involved in these will be moving on in various ways: some will be graduating, some progressing to the next year of their course and others – though not very many at all – will be leaving without qualifying.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Ireland, students in the Class of 25 have today been receiving their school Leaving Certificate results. As expected, the proportion at the highest grade (H1) is down significantly compared 2024. On the other hand, the total number of students taking Leaving Certificate examinations is significantly higher than last year. You can find all the national statistics here.
How these nationwide effects will work their way through to undergraduate admissions at Maynooth remains to be seen. Applicants will get offers through the CAO system next week; the points required by each higher education institution should be available online on Wednesday 27th. The Irish Times traditionally publishes a pull-out supplement showing all the offers for all courses at all universities across the sector the following day, i.e. on Thursday 28th September.
By the end of next week, therefore, we’ll have some sort of an idea how many students we will have entering the University in September 2025 and can begin moving on to the next academic year. One thing I’ve already got sorted out – way ahead of previous years – is my teaching timetable for Semester 1. Usually I’ve been happy if I had this before the first week of term! My new timetable makes Tuesdays and Thursdays my heaviest teaching days, but gives me Wednesday free for research and other things that I’ve started planning already.
#AoibhinnGallagher #CAO #CentralAdmissionsOffice #ExaminationBoards #LeavingCertificate #LeavingCertificate2025 #MaynoothUniversity #PhD
The Week Ahead
Another weekend is almost over so, after spending most of this afternoon in the garden, I’ve retreated indoors to look at my calendar for the forthcoming week. I find a plethora of Examination Board meetings, one (tomorrow) for our Masters students who did their presentations on Friday and two for undergraduates who took repeat examinations in August (one for Mathematical Physics and one for Engineering, as I happen to have been teaching Engineering Mathematics this year). The two undergraduate boards are both on Thursday. All three of these should be relatively brief, but you never know…
There is another meeting tomorrow, Monday, about organizing our computational physics teaching for the new academic year. The merger of theoretical and experimental physics has given us the chance to coordinate the different computational modules offered by the two previous departments, but we need to make sure the teaching rooms are big enough and the computers have the correct software, etc. Fortunately I’m not actually teaching Computational Physics again until Semester 2 but we have to get it sorted in time for other modules happening in Semester 1.
In between Monday and Thursday I have two whole days with no meetings and no grading to do. I might be able to get on with some research, or at least with writing up some research I’ve already done.
Friday is a big day for the Irish higher education system, in that it’s the day students get their Leaving Certificate results. This year the grade inflation introduced during the pandemic is supposed to begin to unwind, but none of us outside the examination system knows how this will be achieved or what the results will be. If I had to bet I’d say that the CAO points needed for most courses at Maynooth will go down substantially, partly because of the deflation mentioned previously but also because The Management has decided that the University has to recruit more and more students and will drop entry standards as low as it needs to in order to meet its targets.
I don’t know how many students we will end up with for Academic Year 2025/6 but I do know that I will have retired before most of them complete their course. I used to find it a bit scary thinking about retirement, but not any more.
#ComputationalPhyscs #LeavingCertificate #MaynoothUniversity #Physics #postgraduate #undergraduate
The main issue I have with the Irish School #LeavingCertificate is that it doesn't have as much potential for smutty innuendo as the British #ALevel (or the old #OLevel)
Irish universities to change entry to medicine courses to ‘refocus on Leaving Cert achievement’ – The Journal
Irish universities to change entry to medicine courses to ‘refocus on Leaving Cert achievement’ The JournalChanges announced to Hpat…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #hpat #IE #Ireland #IrishUniversities #LeavingCert #LeavingCertificate #Medicine #medicineprogrammes
https://www.newsbeep.com/4802/
The 2025 Leaving Certificate Mathematics Papers
As I mentioned a few days ago, examinations for the 2025 school Leaving Certificate are under way. One of the interesting things about the Irish system is that the examination papers are put up online immediately after the examinations. Students took their first paper in Mathematics (either Ordinary or Higher level) on Friday (yesterday), and there has been some reaction.
Anyway, I thought I’d share the papers here so you can see what you think. Paper 2 is on Monday 9th June, so I’ll add those papers then.
LC003GLP100EVDownload LC003ALP100EVDownloadThey look reasonable to me. The thing that strikes me about them is that they are much more structured than the A-level mathematics examinations I took way back in 1981.
Comments are welcome through the box below.
Update: As promised here are the Papers 2:
LC003GLP200EVDownload LC003ALP200EVDownloadReaction to Paper 2 of Higher Mathematics is that it was more challenging than Paper 1.
As over 60,000 students across Ireland sit down for their #leavingcertificate exams, one question should be on all our minds, not just theirs:
If you had to take a climate exam today, would you pass?
https://globalactionplan.ie/blogs/as-students-sit-the-leaving-cert-gap-ireland-asks/
As over 60,000 students across Ireland sit down for their #LeavingCertificate exams, one question should be on all our minds, not just theirs:
If you had to take a climate exam today, would you pass?
https://globalactionplan.ie/blogs/as-students-sit-the-leaving-cert-gap-ireland-asks/
The Leaving
Today is not only a significant date for me (in more ways than one), but it’s important for many young people in Ireland because the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate examinations both start today, so the first thing I need to do is wish everyone starting their examinations the very best of luck!
Among other things, the results of the leaving certificate examinations are important for September’s university admissions. This year the grade inflation that occurred during the pandemic years will be reduced, though it is not yet clear how. Whatever happens is likely to have a big impact on student recruitment to third-level institutions.
In the system operating in England and Wales the standard qualification for entry is the GCE A-level. Most students take A-levels in three subjects, which gives them a relatively narrow focus although the range of subjects to choose from is rather large. In Ireland the standard qualification is the Leaving Certificate, which comprises a minimum of six subjects, with many students taking more than this. This gives students a broader range of knowledge at the sacrifice (perhaps) of a certain amount of depth; it has been decreed for entry into this system that an Irish Leaving Certificate subject counts as about 2/3 of an A-level subject for admissions purposes, so Irish students do the equivalent of at least four A-levels, and many do more than this. It’s also worth noting that all students have to take Mathematics at Leaving Certificate level.
One can choose to do Leaving Certificate subjects at Ordinary or Higher level and there’s quite a big difference between the two, especially in Mathematics (of which more below).
Overall I prefer the Leaving Certificate over the UK system of A-levels, as the former gives the students a broader range of subjects than the latter (as does the International Baccalaureate). I would have liked to have been allowed to take at least one arts subject past O-level, for example.
For University admissions points are awarded for each paper according to the marks obtained and then aggregated into a total CAO points, CAO being the Central Applications Office, the equivalent of the UK’s UCAS. This means, for example, that our main Science pathway at Maynooth allows students to study Physics without having done it at Leaving Certificate level. This obviously means that the first year has to be taught at a fairly elementary level, but it has the enormous benefit of allowing us to recruit students whose schools do not offer Physics.
There is however a big problem with Mathematics. It was decided some years ago that students would get 25 extra CAO points if they got a mark of at least 40% in Higher Mathematics. This has led to more students taking the subject, which is good, but there are signs that this may have led to a decline in standards. If, for example, the marking is such that a fixed proportion of students get the top grade but more weaker students take the examination, that means that standards fall at the top end. For more discussion, see here.
Anyway, our Theoretical Physics & Mathematics course requires a good result in Higher Mathematics for entry. Will changes to the marking of Higher Mathematics this year make it harder for students to make the grade? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Moreover, since the pandemic struck, students have been able to choose to answer questions from a limited range of sections on the mathematics examination papers. That means that students can get very high grades despite knowing nothing about a big chunk of the syllabus. That matters most for subjects that require students to have certain skills and knowledge for entry into University, such as Physics. I taught part of our first year Mathematical Physics course in Maynooth for about 5 years. It was noticeable how the fraction that were comfortable with basic differentiation and integration was falling. Will this trend accelerate? Again, we’ll just have to wait and see…
#Examinations #LeavingCertificate #LeavingCertificate2025 #mathematics #MaynoothUniversity #Physics
Best wishes to everyone starting their #LeavingCertificate exams tomorrow! #LeavingCert2025
Best wishes to everyone starting their #LeavingCertificate exams tomorrow!
Today is the day that students across Ireland receive offers of places at Third-Level Institutions to start next month; the full set of CAO points required for different courses in different institutions are available in searchable form here and in a more user-friendly interface here. I have been away on sabbatical for a year so have been out of the loop for admissions. In past years I got an idea of how things were going from Open Days, etc, but not this time round.
This is of course just the first round of offers so things may change significantly over the next week or two. Students now have to decide whether to accept their first-round offer or try to change course. They have until next Tuesday to do this. Departments won’t know how many new students they have for a while yet.
The official low-tech results for Maynooth (in the lower right of the page shown above) are here. Minimum points required for Maynooth’s – and indeed Ireland’s – most important course, MH206 Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, are 513 this year, up a from 493 last year. Here’s a graph of how the CAO points for this course have varied over the years since 2010:
The entry level has been rather steady but note that Leaving Certificate grades have been adjusted upwards for the past few years so 500 points in 2024 is not equivalent to the same number in (say) 2016. The above graph doesn’t show how many students were recruited each year either.
MH201 General Science is 350 this year (same as last year); MH204 Physics with Astrophysics is 383 this year, up slightly from 376 last year. MH101 General Arts – the most popular course at Maynooth and indeed in all Ireland – has a first round offer of 307 this year, down from 310 last year. Most courses I have looked at in Maynooth have first-round offers this year similar to or lower than last year. Across all institutions, required points have fallen or remained unchanged for about 57% of courses.
This is interesting because it contrasts with news stories about grade inflation on the Leaving Certificate; I blogged about this here. It is perhaps worth pointing out that the CAO points needed for a course is largely a matter of demand versus capacity rather than academic performance. For the last few years Maynooth University has been recruiting more and more students, putting pressure on accommodation, teaching loads and campus space. It seems likely that the desire to keep this trend going is at least part of the reason for the continued falls in CAO points here. This is probably happening to some extent across the sector, though Maynooth has a more urgent need for more students: to pay for the legions of new managers it has appointed. The race to the bottom will really accelerate when the Covid-era Leaving Certificate adjustment is removed.
Update: here is the traditional supplement from Thursday’s Irish Times:
https://telescoper.blog/2024/08/28/a-time-to-offer/
#CAO #CAOOffers #LeavingCertificate #MaynoothUniversity #MH201 #MH204 #MH206
Today’s the day that over 60,000 school students across Ireland are receiving their Leaving Certificate Results. As always there will be joy for some, and disappointment for others. The headline news relating to these results is that a majority (68%) of grades have been scaled up to that the distribution matches last year’s outcomes. This has meant an uplift of marks by about 7.5% on average, with the biggest changes happening at the lower levels of grade.
This artificial boost is a consequence of the generous adjustments made during the pandemic and apparent wish by the Education Minister, Norma Foley, to ensure that this year’s students are treated “fairly” compared to last year’s. Of course this argument could be made for continuing to inflate grades next year too, and the year after that. Perhaps the Minister’s plan seems to be to keep the grades high until after the next General Election, after which it will be someone else’s job to treat students “unfairly”. Anyway, you might say that marks have been scaled to maintain a Norma Distribution…
One can’t blame the students, of course, but one of the effects of this scaling is that students will be coming into third-level education with grades that imply a greater level of achievement than they actually have reached. This is a particular problem with a subject like physics where we really need students to be comfortable with certain aspects of mathematics before they start their course. It has been clear that even students with very good grades at Higher level have considerable gaps in their knowledge. This looks set to continue, and we will just have to deal with it. This issue was compounded for a while because Leaving Certificate grades were produced so late that first-year students had to start university a week late, giving less time for the remedial teaching that many of them needed. At least this year we won’t have that problem, so can plan some activities early on in the new Semester.
Anyway, out of interest – probably mine rather than yours – I delved into the statistics of Leaving Certificate results going back six years for Mathematics (at Higher A and Ordinary B) level, Physics and Applied Mathematics which I fished out of the general numbers given here.
Here are the results in a table, with the columns denoting the grade (1=high) and the numbers are percentages:
You can seen that the percentage of students getting H1 in Mathematics has increased a bit to 12.6% after falling considerably from 18.1% in 2022 to 11.2% last year (2023); note the huge increase in H1 from 2020 to 2021 (8.6% to 15.1%). Another thing worth noting is that both Physics and Applied Mathematics have declined significantly in popularity since 2019 from 7210.
Now that the results are out there will be a busy time until next Wednesday (28th) when the CAO first round offers go out. That is when those students wanting to go to university find out if they made the grades and university departments find out how many new students (if any) they will have to teach in September.
P.S. When I was a little kid we used to call a “Certificate” a “Stiff Ticket”. I just thought you would like to know that.
https://telescoper.blog/2024/08/23/leaving-certificate-results/
#AppliedMathematics #ireland #LeavingCertificate #LeavingCertificate2024 #mathematics #NormalFoley #Physics
I just passed by some poppies growing on a rather scruffy piece of verge near my house. They reminded me of this poem by Sylvia Plath, which I have posted before.
Incidentally, this poem is among those of Sylvia Plath specified for the Leaving Certificate examination in English next year…
I feel that #Election2024 is much more difficult than the #LeavingCertificate Geography & Maths Paper 1.
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