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THE WAIT IS finally over and students across the country will soon be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief:
The Leaving Cert results are in.
Overall national statistics show it’s been a mixed bag in terms of how students compared to last year, with the number of A1s down in most subjects, but results looking better in certain areas.
6,279 people in total received A1s in this year’s round of results, compared to 6,654 last year.
The number of A1s has dropped by 375 on last year’s results.
Six people received eight A1s representing a drop on last year.
As well as this, there was no one who received nine A1s in this year’s round of results, compared to one person last year.
Statistics released by the State Examinations Commission (SEC) show that 58,466 students sat the Leaving Certificate examination this year, up almost 1% on last year (57,931 students).
The most popular high-level subjects to be taken by students were:
The Big Three
Questions have been raised in recent years over the rising rates of failure in higher-level Maths.
Much focus has been on Maths due to the changes to the syllabus over the past few years and the introduction of Project Maths.
The results show that the rate of failure in higher-level has dropped slightly to 4.6%, compared to 5% last year.
As well as this, the rate of A1s at higher-level has risen to 5.5% this year from 5.2% last year.
However, the number of people failing to get a D grade or higher in ordinary-level Maths has risen significantly.
In total, about 4,000 students failed Maths across higher, ordinary and foundation levels.
The rate of failure in ordinary-level Maths is up from 5.8% to 9.2%, a rise of 3.4%.
And while most higher-level maths students passed the exam, about 700 failed.
Commenting on the Maths results, Education Minister Richard Bruton said that there were features that “need closer examination”.
“We will be looking at those. I understand there has been difficulty in some areas… and we may need to look at that,” he said.
The curriculum board will be looking at the whole Maths area this year and we’ll see how we can work on that.
Irish fared the best out of all the papers, with 86% of students receiving an honours grade in the higher paper (although this is a drop on last year).
5.3% of students received an A1 in the subject (down 1.2% on last year).
The rate of A1s received in the English higher-level stayed static this year at 3.2%.
Overall, 36,577 took the exam, making it the most popular subject.
As the below graphs show, the number of A1s in higher-level Maths has been rising steadily over the past three years. A1s in Irish shot up last year before settling back down this year, while English has remained relatively steady.
When compared to ordinary-level, A1s in Maths took a big hit last year before rebounding well this year. Irish and English have both remained relatively steady over the past three years.
LANGUAGES
French was the most popular foreign language taken by students this year, with 25,758 students taking both higher and ordinary level.
5.8% of students in higher-level received an A1, compared with 6.5% last year.
Russian had the highest rate of A1s out of any subject.
In total, 333 students took the higher-level course and a whopping 68.2% of these received an A1 grade (compared to 72.1% last year).
Latin followed behind. While only 104 students took the exam, 16.3% of these received A1s.
This is again a big drop on the 30% that received A1s in 2015.
Teachers of Spanish will be happy with how students did in the subject overall. 250 extra students took higher-level in the subject and the rate of A1s rose to 9% (compared to 8.5% last year).
Arabic was one of the few subjects that performed significantly stronger in compared to last year.
110 students in total took the subject, with nearly 11% of these getting A1s. This is a big jump on the 5.3% who received an A1 last year.
In total, 1,424 students took non-curricular EU languages this year, a slight rise on last year.
Here is the breakdown of languages that were studied:
SCIENCES
As is the norm, Biology was by far the most popular science subject this year, with 34,102 students taking the subject overall.
There was a full percentage point drop in the number of A1s in higher-level for the subject, with 5.5% receiving the honour this year.
The number of students taking higher-level Chemistry was up this year to 7,658, but as with the general trend the rate of of A1s was also down to 10.5% compared to 12.8% last year.
In Physics, the rate of A1s was also down on last year.
OTHER SUBJECTS
The rate of passing and A1s was up in a number of subjects in this year’s Leaving Cert.
Other subjects in which students improved are:
Commenting on the results, Bruton congratulated students on reaching an important milestone and urged them to think carefully about their options in the future.
“There are more course and career options than ever before available to students to consider after their Leaving Certificate,” the minister said.
“There is a wide range of other training and education opportunities available alongside those offered through the CAO process, such as apprenticeships and Post Leaving Certificate courses.
We are also developing new apprenticeship pathways to expand opportunities for the future. So whatever your results – there is something out there for you.
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Well the failure and A1 rates will always remain fairly consistent because of the bell curve. Would be interesting to see the Maths results if they used the original marking scheme as opposed to the one they have to cobble together at the conference in July.
And the fact that there are teachers teaching maths who wouldn’t even know themselves what a bell curve is………
Exactly. An A1 mark is just a relative mark compared to other students, not an absolute result.
Probably an IQ test and an aptitude test in Maths and English (such as GMAT) would be more useful for employers.
My daughter was taught Maths by an English teacher because the Maths teacher had to be let go because of cut backs. We need the teachers who teach these important subjects to be actual teachers of these subjects.
@Fred , I get the impression that the Irish system doesn’t want talent to shine ,it just wants a bunch of compliant generalists. If you look at the people that really advance science etc they wouldn’t have gotten “9 A1s” they would have done brilliantly in a couple and probably only passed others.
Dave you’re right the system rewards generalisation. If you want to study Physics at university, all that should matter should be your Physics leaving cert result, an IQ test and an aptitude test. It should not matter that you managed to learn the rivers of Ireland off by heart and got an A1 in Geography.
@Fred , and people wonder why less boys go onto college. Actually with Physics, that has been dumbed down as well. In the US Physics would cover the Applied maths course here. but yeah point taken
The leaving cert is a failure of a system. Ed Walsh, the best voice on education in Ireland, has pointed the finger firmly at the unions and I completely agree. Our teachers fail our students and it’s not their fault, they are hamstrung by the unions.
Dave – yes the system as currently set up favours girls by encouraging generalisation, learning off by heart and useless foreign languages given the same weight as useful subjects like science, maths and engineering.
Boys will excel when they are allowed to specialise on a narrower spectrum of topics.
Tho IQ test’s vary widely and im my vast experience, not a great indicator of actual intelligence. Bu I agree that field specific testing is a much better idea.
Why do you think girls don’t excel at ‘useful’ subjects like science, maths and engineering?
Lads there’s studies out there to prove this. There is no such thing as a learning style. The girls cope with poorer teaching methods at that age due to their great maturity at the same age as boys. The gap narrows when the boys close that gap later. In truth if the teaching and methodology was changed they could learn at a relatively equal rate and learn more in the process.
@Archive , partially tactical , partially ability and partially interest. Male intelligence has a wider bell curve with more idiots and more geniuses. Also if you want to do something like law its just a points grab so why bother doing Applied Math if you have no interest in the hard sciences or engineering.
Emma – what do you define by “actual intelligence” then if you dismiss IQ tests?
Personally i think aptitude tests are the best as they measure numerical competency and written comprehension, all within a time limit which mimics the real world that employers work in. Not really able to prepare for them either so the swots who study morning noon and night will not be at an advantage.
@Fred – true: and not forgetting despite your Physics brilliance but that you were denied access to it at 3rd level because you couldn’t pass a language that is no longer widely spoken and in no way connected to your core subject………….
I’ve been teaching for more than ten years and have yet to see a student who performed brilliantly in one subject and could not pass the others.
Sorry James. When you claim that Ed Walsh is the best voice on education in Ireland you have undermined whatever argument you were going to make. Ed Walsh’s education utopia is where teachers are paid peanuts and have to live in schools. Our teachers do not fail our students, the huge majority serve our students extraordinarily well despite our government’s and union’s best efforts.
Sharon Curly got an A1
Good Girl Sharon….
What a bullshit, small minded comment. Well done John
@john Hopefully the few who want to.
@Fergus Murphy: That’s because she studied under Mr Burgess
I stand by what I said. Read up on it. Farcical.
What did he say because it got deleted?
And the taxi drivers of Ireland are taking the night off….
Russian had the highest amount of A1′s? Is there nobody they won’t bribe?
This kind of analysis should have waited until the poor students have received their results. Are they not already under enough stress and pressure ? This will not help their nerves and is completely unfair…
That’s a good thing… The grades were inflating, extra points for Math and Subjects in Irish it’s getting far too easy. Nearly every single college course in good universities is up in the 500s, most people I know from a decade ago wouldn’t get into the courses they completed a decade ago on the same points.
In fairness there’s a lot of work going into completing exams through Irish. Back in my day there was only two textbooks available through Irish. It meant a lot of translation work when studying subjects such as history, geography, business and home economic. In my school some of the students had not studied through Irish before they got high marks in the entrance exams and were put in the Irish stream.
If you do a subject through Irish you get 10% of the points you didn’t get, eg: 90% in History you get bumped up to 91, 70 in biology you get 73% pretty fair given the phrases and terminology you would need to have grasp off
I did applied maths through irish. And used like no irish
You idiots , you only need 6 A1′s , why get 9.
You can do as many subjects as you like then take your six best.
I still think they need to introduce continues assessment into the leaving cert. They way they do it today is very unfair on students. Were not living in the stone age anymore. It needs to be addressed.
The fact that life won’t always be fair… Is an important lesson that kids need to learn.
Externally set and marked exams are the most reliable and valid forms of academic assessment, and thus the fairest. Nothing is perfect but the Leaving Cert means our students are treated more fairly than in many other educational systems.
In most degree courses in College you have big exams…..so continous assessment sounds grand but it reality it doesnt do the kids any service for future years….we mollycoddle them enough as it is and then when they get into college they suddenly discover that they have to work even harder that in secondary school….
You cannot compare Second Level education to Third level (I have and do work in both). I think Linda is right, in that students need to learn teamwork and problem solving skills, and learn things “the hard way”, as in through investigation – rather than being told – this is how we do it.
The so called soft skills and coping skills don’t come into things with the current LC system. With our educational ethos, CA solely would not work here, I don’t think the workload at third level is as intense as studying for the leaving Certificate at all – as the LC is far too diverse at present – with the obligatory subjects, which seem to be a “get through it” than a “love for learning”.
Going back, teaching Latin in primary – where when it comes to second level they would know grammar rules, which would better lead to taking up other romance languages. Irish needs to become more of a spoken language to age ten, rather than what it currently is, then its compulsion could be removed from LC as people would be able to use it. I think Irish is important, don’t get me wrong, however if at 18 you cannot speak it, or write it, why should you be doing a high stakes exam in it?
While I also think Maths is important, and one of my fave subjects in school (I went to Art College after LC, and subsequently did a Computer Science MSc later) – again, not everyone is mathematically or logically intelligent, and again I don’t agree with it as is as a compulsory subject – problem solving skills, either via DCG, Woodwork/Engineering/Coding may be more beneficial. The truth of this is when you have people “bad at maths” who can calculate how to hit a snooker ball perfectly to pocket five, those who can calculate bet odds or complex aggregators, or those who can kick a ball to get it in the net without thinking. Same skills (physics or statistics) – however there is no parallel drawn between these.
WIth the last of the blessed trinity – I think English should be the only obligatory one, but more emphasis should be placed on English Language, rather than English Lit. Literature is amazing, but when conjugation, spelling, and a complete inability to understand punctuation – the difference between “I like cooking my family and my friends” and “I like cooking, my family, and my friends” using em dashes, ellipsis, etc… can really help people communicate more effectively.
Maths should be compulsory, no doubt in my mind.
Non-mathsy people can do ordinary or at the least foundation without much trouble. You need the very basics (foundation) in maths to get through life.
There’s an argument to be made for Irish to be non-compulsory though, yeah.
LC is harder than third level?? I’d seriously question the difficulty of your third level courses then so.
I’d be against continuous assessment , it will put boys back even further because this type of education style suits girls. When you get to college or do professional exams, nobody is micro managing your work plan
In some third level students could choose if they wanted to take 100% exams OR have some of the marked banked before taking finals. That’s a choice I feel should be offered for LC.
Practical subjects such as woodwork, metalwork, and dcg have up to 40% done before the exam. Language orals can bank around 20-25% before even going into the exam centre. Experiment work and field studies in the sciences and ag science also carry marks before the exam. Home ec has practical work before the exams too. Most subjects have a certain percentage of the marks awarded before the exam. Maths, English and some other subjects I’m unaware of don’t but the vast majority do
It sort of is Emma, you can choose subjects with project work or orals which give you marks before you sit the exam.
Absolutely right….both our daughters did Irish..hated it..and have no use for it whatsoever now…..one is an accountant and the other a nurse….Irish should not be compulsory any more..students should be free to make more choices about languages than at present. Offering extra points for Hons Maths has lead to people doing it and scraping a pass only to flounder in Third level….warps the whole thing….we need to be teaching students proper computer skills in second level and not the usual rubbish we teach them at present.
@Linda
Your daughters both hated Irish? Wow, that is a shock. Of course, they couldn’t have picked up that negative attitude towards Irish at home, given the deep love you evidently have for Irish.
my husband is an irish speaker so they never got a negative attitude at home…..they disliked the subject and felt they would have been better off doing a third language rather than the two they did do. they will never use Irish again. so there is little point.
Maths has been dumbed down , give a kid today a 1980′s honours Maths and there would be all kinds of triggering.
Try doing an honours maths paper now, I dare ya.
I’d need a bit of revision but if its any consolation I will have covered the Junior Cert Maths syllabus with my son by the next summer and he is only going into 6th class.
Junior Cert maths is nothing compared to LC, in fairness. You’d need a lot more than revision.
@mal Im out of school more than 20 years, apart from a couple of subjects I work with I’d pretty much fail them all tomorrow. a lot of the old LC maths would probably come back to me when I get tucked into again.
LC maths has changed *loads* since you’ve been in school, I wasn’t insulting you when I said you’d need more than revision.
The emphasis on statistics and probability in the new course is outrageous, things like matrices are now non-existent and calculus is basic at worst. It’s a completely different subject than it was and not necessarily “dumbed-down” either.
it sounds like the new course doesn’t suit the hard sciences or engineering. Ive heard stories of university students going over to universities in the US thinking they are hot stuff but finding themselves struggling in Maths subjects
I studied statistics for a year in college and I didn’t find it a challenge in terms of mathematical reasoning. it just seems to be a way to pad out the maths course so more people can do it
I’m doing “hard” science and it does suit it, it depends what you’re at really. If you’re doing something like engineering, you’re probably right that the new course is a bit weaker for you.
However the new course does suit most science courses more because of the emphasis on statistical analysis and probability rather than matrices or pure maths.
@Malachi I know stats is important but its conceptually easier to learn than heavy calculus. the maths course in school should reflect the ability level required for the tougher science and engineering courses.
Ah sure it’s not the end of the world.
Remember too, next year, new grading system kicks in – with H1 – H7 – a H7 being 30%-40% now becoming a Pass… just wait a year, if you got an E, your fail will translate into a pass… be grand
Seriously outrageous that next year you can get an E in HL maths and “pass” it.
It’ll cause people to chance their arm and do HL maths when they really shouldn’t be.
to be fair, anyone can learn honours maths with a good teacher, environment and encouragement. it’s not rocket science to pass honours maths, but far too often students are meant to feel like they wouldn’t pass it no matter how much effort they put into it, and encouraged to move to pass. lazy teaching by teachers who would be better off learning how to pass honours maths themselves.
Sweeping and unfounded generalisation no doubt based on one or two abstract stories about a school you know where this happened and therefore must mean that it’s widespread. By the way, good teacher, environment, encouragement, ability and hard work is the recipe for success in pretty much every subject.
Ridiculous memory test. Proves nothing!. I got an A in music but couldn’t do music in college cause I never got that C in Home Ec??? Wtf?? Instead I waited years and paid 5grand to become a music teacher. Joke system
The way mathematics is taught needs to change. From my experience there was too much emphasis on memorising concepts as opposed to understanding them. It was only when I went on to university I truly understood how bad it was taught in secondary school. That’s just my experience, I am sure there are many schools who teach it different
Absolutely! Especially what they added on this year in statistics. We did it one month before the exam. I had absolutely no idea what was going on with hypothesis and null hypothesis and all that stuff. It came up though and I followed my “steps”. I ended up with an a2 but I swear to god I studied so much maths that year that it was almost a disappointing result. It’s the only subject that I’m good at.
Lol no mention of Art, DCG, or Home Economics, the latter of which I thought was more popular than History. Then there is this…
“Irish fared the best out of all the papers, with 86% of students receiving an honours grade in the higher paper (although this is a drop on last year).
5.3% of students received an A1 in the subject (down 1.2% on last year).”
I ndarire, níorbh lan daoine abalta caint i nGaelige faoi gcasanna ó lá go lá. Beigean duinn, mar tír, caint is ní mo a foighleam teagaí eile an domhain. Ta mo ghaeilge scribohaithe, go h-uathfasach.
ie – honestly not a lot of us can speak Irish in day to day scenarios. After studying it for 14 years + we should all be fluent. Iberians, the Nordic Countries, Germans, the Swiss can all speak at least three languages – yet nowadays even the one (English) amongst many of the youth of today is questionable. Languages, as IBEC (who I NEVER agree with) state, are one are we badly need to be better at, as well as ICT/Computer Science – which there is no provision for at all at second level, barely being touched on with Scratch.
Believe it or not Keith, the manner in which Irish is taught isn’t really responsible for people not being fluent in Irish after 13 years.
Look at maths – we also study that for 13 years, but we aren’t a country full of maths professors either. The only maths people remember how to use is the maths they use in everyday life – so adding, subtracting, multiplication and division, percentages, and maybe fractions. The reason we can still do these is that we use them still in our day to day lives. Most of us don’t use calculus or trigonometry in our daily lives, so we forget it. And the same logic applies to Irish.
Learning Irish for 13 years sounds like a long time – but another way of looking at it is that students are only exposed to Irish for a half-hour a day. In secondary school, your daily Irish class is 40 minutes, plus say 20 minutes for homework, giving us an hour. But then factor in that students are in school less than half the days of the year, so we will be generous and say an average of half-hour a day. Then factor in that of that half-hour, students will hear as much English as Irish, and for the most part will be passively, rather than actively learning. Given all that, why would we expect people to be fluent in Irish after their schooling? Even if we taught another language in the exact same manner instead of Irish, say German or Mandarin, the results would be pretty similar.
And as for other countries speaking more than one language – one of the main reasons other nationalities have higher raters of second language acquisition than we do is because there is another language besides their own that, on a global scale, is more useful (in economic terms) and more appealing (from a movie/music/entertainment perspective) than their own – and that is English. So students in non-English speaking countries have a major incentive to acquire a second language, and many students will make more of an effort to learn that language, without any encouragement from their education system. On the other hand, students in English speaking countries across the world have lower levels of second-language acquisition because, in simple terms, there is no language more useful than their native language, so students aren’t too pushed about learning a second language.
I remember my leaving cert French exam. Because of the fact that I was French. I flew through it. Finished an hour and a half before everyone else. By the time they got out I was already watching a world cup match between austraila and Japan. And had already eaten a large bag of chips. Passed the exam. Higher level A1
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