Leaving Cert papers changed due to Covid impact on schools

Leaving certificate students who opt to sit written exams this year will, in general, face fewer questions on their papers following a series of further adjustments announced by the Department of Education on Tuesday evening.

After consulting with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and the State Examinations Commission, the Department published a raft of further adjustments to this year’s exams given the impact of school closures during the pandemic.

The Department said the adjustments are being made in light of the “further disruption to learning” and that the changes to exam papers aim to “lessen the load” for students preparing for their exams and on the exam day itself.

The new changes will apply to written exams only and will not apply to aural or practical exams.

The changes are additional to adjustments made last year and in some cases will supersede previous changes, the Department said.

The biggest change is a reduction in the number of questions on exam papers across most written subjects while the amount of time given to complete the exams will remain unchanged.

This will offer “further choice” and ease the pressure on students, the Department said.

“While this will have the effect of also reducing the time needed to complete the examination, the duration of each examination will remain unchanged, thus substantively relieving time pressures,” said the Departmental document outlining the changes.

This year’s exam papers will maintain the overall structure and layout of the traditional leaving certificate format and no new material has been added.

In most subjects, total marks for each paper will be reduced and marks may be redistributed because of the changes made.

For students sitting the leaving certificate applied exams they will not see changes to their written papers but will see their final results scaled up.

The Department previously agreed to scale up final exam marks for this student group by a factor of 1.15 but has now agreed to increase finals results by a factor of 1.25 this year.

More details of the changes in each subject can be found at www.examinations.ie and on gov.ie/leavingcertificate2021.