STUDENTS AFFECTED BY by the Leaving Certificate calculated grades error will be included in the Central Applications Office’s fourth round of offers this Thursday.
The higher education institutions (HEI) and the CAO both agreed to include offers arising from corrections to calculated grades along with the Round Four offers after they received the corrected data over the weekend.
“On receipt of the data from the Department of Education on Saturday, CAO processed the corrections to the Leaving Certificate grades over the weekend,” CAO’s General Manager, Joseph O’Grady said.
“On Sunday, HEIs began the process of reviewing the affected applications. Where possible, HEIs will authorise CAO to issue offers to applicants who have been upgraded and, as a result of this upgrade, are now eligible for a new offer.”
Applicants who receive an offer on Thursday have until 3pm on Tuesday, 13 October to accept the offer if they wish to do so.
“The CAO Round 4 offers on Thursday at 10am will include the offers arising from corrections to calculated grades. Welcome news. Excellent work underway by higher education institutions, the CAO & the @hea_irl. Will keep you updated,” Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris tweeted.
In total, 6,870 grades were increased following a review of the Leaving Certificate calculated grades system, with 614 schools and education centres – out of a total of 741 – having at least one upgraded result.
Education Minister Norma Foley had predicted that around 7,200 grades had been affected, with approximately 6,500 students expected to receive higher grades following the review process, which was conducted by US company Education Training Services.
It had been estimated that an 1,000 additional college places could be required to deal with the problems caused by the error. The CAO did not disclose how many additional places would be offered in its statement this evening.
Foley said that her department and the Department of Higher Education were working to ensure that anyone entitled to a higher points course would be able to start it in this academic year.
For applicants who have already received an offer in a previous offer round, CAO provides the following advice:
1. Accept the new offer by the ‘Reply Date’ of Tuesday, 13 October at 3pm if you prefer this course to the one that you have already accepted – this action automatically cancels your previous acceptance.
2. If you do not wish to accept the new offer you can simply do nothing and your previous acceptance will still stand.
3. If you wish to defer your current offer do not accept it now, you must contact the Admissions Office of the offering institution immediately by email with the text ‘Deferred Entry’ in the subject line of the email. See CAO Handbook page 19 or the CAO website for more information.
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