Everyone wants the easy H1, but which subjects have the highest and lowest percentage of top grades – and why?
Every year, there tends to be a similar pattern.
Minority language subjects have a relatively high level of H1s. Subjects such as Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Portuguese sit at the top of this list partly because relatively few students sit them, but also because those that do tend to be native speakers, with the language in everyday use in the family home.
English is, for many students, their most beloved subject – but it’s always been one of the hardest to get a H1 in. Teachers say that this is because marking schemes cannot easily capture the relatively subjective nature of good or bad writing.
Physical education, a relatively new subject to the Leaving Cert curriculum, also has a low H1 rate. This is a subject with a practical performance assessment and a written exam, plus a coursework/portfolio element.
Practical assessments tend to be marked against fixed rubrics rather than open-ended excellence, which naturally compresses the top end – it’s harder to stand out the way you can on an essay or problem set.
Construction studies, economics, geography and business also cluster towards the bottom, and are among the hardest for students to get top marks.
Physics and chemistry are often perceived as difficult subjects, but, outside minority languages, they, along with accounting, tend to have a higher H1 rate.
This is possibly because those who choose the subjects have a genuine aptitude for them.
On the other hand, these three subjects also have the highest failure rates. Physics, chemistry and accounting are subjects with substantial numerical/problem-solving content where partial understanding often isn’t enough to clear the bar.
Irish teaching is often criticised but, every year, the subject gets a relatively high level of H1, H2 and H3s. Of course, none of this should necessarily influence a student’s individual subject choices: they should choose what they most enjoy, not just what is perceived as “easier” – and, in any case, Mandarin Chinese is not going to be “easy” if you don’t have a background in the language. Physics won’t be easy if you don’t like the subject and struggle with maths.
The three biggest subjects have, as always, low fail rates. This year, 2.3 per cent failed maths, 2.1 per cent failed Irish and just 0.8 per cent failed English. This likely reflects that these compulsory subjects have strong support from teachers in schools. So, while H1 rates may be low, this is offset by a very low fail rate.
All of this is, of course, in the context of the ongoing unwinding of the grade inflation that followed from the pandemic, where teachers had to assess their own students for certification.
Those higher grades, in turn, led to higher CAO points, but the hope is that these, too, will fall when offers are made next week.