Reflections on the 2026 Leaving Certificate Results

Yesterday I attended my last two Examination Boards for the year at Maynooth University. one for graduating MSc students and another for undergraduate repeat students in Engineering (which I attend because I’m teaching a mathematics course they do). That, more or less, is the end of the business (for me) for the 2025/6 academic year. No sooner is that done, however, than preparations for the start of the 2026/7 teaching session begins, as we wait to find out how many new students we will be admitting to our courses in September. Today’s the day that over 70,000 school students across Ireland received their Leaving Certificate Results. As always there will be joy for some, and disappointment for others. The headline news relating to these results is that the proportion of students receiving the top grades in higher level examinations (i.e. H1) is down significantly from 11.7% last year to 10.1% this year. This fall is because various adjustments that were made during the Covid-19…