Jess Casey: What will grade inflation mean for the Leaving Cert class of 2022? 

Education Minister Norma Foley's promise of a 'post-marking intervention' to bring grades up leaves many in the education sector expecting at least the same level of grade inflation again this year as in 2021

Grade inflation, an increase in the average grades given to students, increased across the board in 2020 as ‘calculated grades’ were introduced for the first time. It continued to skyrocket across the board in 2021, following the ‘hybrid’ or ‘two-track’ Leaving Cert. Picture: Mark Stedman/RollingNews.ie

Remember during the first year of the pandemic, when there was a time when it seemed like we could rip up everything we disliked and start again?

We were to have reimagined cities and radically different structures and it seemed like the high stakes, high-stress Leaving Cert as we knew it would be one of the old bygones to fall by the wayside. Even the staunchest defender of the State exams acknowledges they have their faults, and everyone from the Taoiseach to the Children’s Ombudsman wants to see reform.