English Paper II blunder fails to impact on grades
The State Examinations Commission (SEC) revealed while grades were marginally down on the honours paper, pupils sitting the ordinary level paper secured better marks than last year.
Candidates were forced to sit the exam on a Saturday morning after a superintendent handed out the wrong paper on the wrong day.
But of 32,863 students who sat the honours English paper 1,249 got an A1, down 0.1%, and 2,100 got an A2, up on 2008. More than 8,900 got B grades; 12,685 secured C grades; 7,328 got Ds, while almost 560 pupils failed.
The number of Leaving Certificate pupils securing the top grade in maths and science subjects dropped dramatically this year.
That led employers’ body IBEC to call for funding for an overhaul of maths teaching.
An analysis of the results shows:
nA1s in applied maths fell for a third year, from 18% to 13.4%, while top marks in physics were down from 12.9% to 10.6%.
* Of 408 pupils who sat combined chemistry/physics 7.8% got an A1 on the honours papers, compared with 16.7% last year.
* Analysis showed the number of candidates who secured an A1 in higher level maths, chemistry, and biology fell about 1%.
* Of 14,796 honours Irish pupils, 843 of them secured an A1 – down 0.2%.
* Despite the English Paper II blunder, 3.8% of 32,863 honours English candidates got A1s, down from 3.9%
State Examinations Commission (SEC) chairman Richard Langford said today marks a milestone for all those receiving the results, and acknowledged the additional stress caused by the rescheduled English paper.
Almost 44,500 of those getting results today will be hoping for an offer of a place at college from the Central Applications Office (CAO) on Monday.
