Points steady as 50,000 offered third-level places

The Leaving Certificate points for most courses have fallen or stayed unchanged as almost 50,000 people are offered a third-level place this morning.

While hundreds of the 1,370 courses need more points than last year, the increases are not on the same scale as last year, when the new bonus points for honours maths saw widespread big jumps in entry standards. Although about 1,700 more students passed higher-level maths in last week’s Leaving Certificate results, numbers of students with more 500 points — before bonus points were added — were down on last year.

Many of the biggest increases were in the computing, science, and engineering fields, with University College Cork’s computer science degree up 90 to 430 points. Courses mixing business and languages face increases of up to 60 points at many colleges.

“CAO applicants have their eyes firmly on the jobs market, with marked increases in demand for commerce and science courses in particular,” said Stephen O’Dea, admissions officer at NUI Galway, where commerce with Spanish is up 50 points to 460.

The 49,837 students offered a college place today can check and accept offers online from 6am. For half those offered an honours degree place, it is the course at the top of their list.

Meanwhile, the State Examinations Commission report to Education Minister Ruairi Quinn on the increased level of mistakes in this year’s Junior and Leaving Certificate has said human error was to blame. It said staffing restrictions and the high recent turnover in senior exam-setting staff significantly increased risk of errors this year.

The report, published this morning, reveals that the exceptional level of errors in the first week of exams triggered a review of all remaining papers, which led to corrections or reprints for three subsequent exams.