Leaving Cert fairness claims don’t add up

A DEFENCE put forward for the current Leaving Certificate points system is the claim that all students are treated the same and consequently the system has an in-built fairness.

Take the following scenario: two students, Mary and Kate, had been friends all through school, studied the same subjects and both wanted to become vets.

When they checked their Leaving Certificate scripts, Mary found that she got 90% in Maths (HL), Chemistry (HL), DCG (HL), Physics (HL) and 85% in English (HL) and Irish (HL). Kate found that she got 89% in all of the foregoing subjects.