{"id":657025,"date":"2026-08-26T07:33:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T07:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/657025\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T07:33:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T07:33:17","slug":"fall-in-leaving-cert-grades-will-not-lead-to-points-drop-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/657025\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall in Leaving Cert grades will not lead to points drop \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fall in Leaving Certificate<\/a> grades this year will not lead to a reduction in CAO<\/a> points as an increased number of applicants balances out college entry requirements. <\/p>\n

Entry points for Irish colleges<\/a> are set to remain broadly the same as last year when round one CAO offers are issued at 2pm on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

University entry requirements have become distorted in recent years following the postmarking adjustment brought in for students whose education was disrupted by Covid-19<\/a> to artificially increase results and ensure there was no cliff-edge in marks. <\/p>\n

That grade inflation is slowly being wound down, falling from 5.8 per cent last year to 4 per cent this year. In practice, this means students who sat the Leaving Cert this year have received on average one less grade increase than last year\u2019s class. <\/p>\n

This slight drop in grades could have reduced points, but counterbalancing that is an increase in overall applicants and a cohort of students from previous years with higher grades.<\/p>\n

There are a total of 95,710 applicants to the CAO this year \u2013 an increase of 6,402 compared with last year.<\/p>\n

Alongside this, 20,527 of this year\u2019s CAO applicants sat their Leaving Cert in a previous year. Many of these students could have higher grades due to increased grade inflation in the years they sat their exams.<\/p>\n

These issues have counterbalanced the drop in grades and resulted in points remaining largely the same. <\/p>\n

While this will vary from course to course, a number of sources indicated that points for traditionally hard to access courses such as medicine and dentistry are unlikely to fall. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Restricted courses: It\u2019s difficult when everyone around you is going, \u2018oh, you\u2019ll get in\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Data from the CAO shows a significant increase in first-preference applications for veterinary medicine (up 82 per cent), physiotherapy (up 27 per cent), and medicine (up 22 per cent).<\/p>\n

In the fields of engineering and architecture, driven by the construction boom, application numbers are up 15 and 12 per cent respectively.<\/p>\n

Applicants awaiting offers for these courses should not expect a decrease in CAO entry point requirements in any of the above given the high demand this year.<\/p>\n

There is a substantial decrease in interest in information and communication technology (ICT) programmes this year, with applications down 9 per cent compared with last year. Other disciplines seeing smaller declines include agriculture and primary school teaching.<\/p>\n

Sources indicated that CAO points requirements would fall for ICT programmes, with a smaller decrease for agriculture and primary teaching.<\/p>\n

In an effort to meet the growing demand for spaces on medical science programmes, Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless<\/a> recently allocated increased funding for hundreds of additional places in medical and paramedical programmes.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0More than 600 extra university places to train nurses, doctors and other key medicsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

However, many universities approved for this funding are struggling to turn this funding into offers to CAO applicants due to the acute shortage of placements, which must accompany each offer. <\/p>\n

Maynooth University, despite these challenges, has doubled the number of places in nursing and expanded places in biomedical science, psychology, sport science and nutrition.<\/p>\n

Places in veterinary medicine are also due to increase this year by about 80, but this will be outstripped by the significant increase in first-choice applications.<\/p>\n

Applicants can view their offers online at www.cao.ie<\/a> from 2pm on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

In advance of the results, An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na yesterday advised students seeking third-level accommodation to watch out for scams<\/a>. The force said the August to October period was the \u201cpeak season\u201d for such scams, with \u201cnotable spikes\u201d recorded during these months in the last two years.<\/p>\n

The Garda said it had received 230 reports of accommodation scams, involving losses to victims of \u20ac400,000, in the first seven months of this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fall in Leaving Certificate grades this year will not lead to a reduction in CAO points as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,14331,64,18,13,14,6,19,17,10473,11,12,12550,15,16,5,12548,7,8,70755],"class_list":["post-657025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-cao","tag-covid-19","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-lawless","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-leaving-certificate","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-third-level","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-your-stories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}