OVER 61,000 STUDENTS received their Leaving Certificate results today and will now be awaiting the release of CAO offers next week.

The vast majority of students took the traditional Leaving Cert programme, 22.13% of students took the Leaving Certificate vocational course and 5.19% took the applied programme. 

In order to calculate Leaving Certificate grades this year students were given the option of sitting the exams or receiving accredited grades.

The majority of students opted to receive results from a combination of exams and accredited grades. Only 185 students chose to receive grades based on exam performance and just over 5,000 students opted to receive results based entirely on accredited grades and did not sit any exams. 

Grades are up significantly from last year, with the number of students receiving top grades at an all-time high. 

While the grades may change, one thing that hasn’t is the vast amount of numbers and statistics involved. We have broken down the most important data from Leaving Cert 2021.

Leaving Cert results in numbers

61,125 – The total number of students who sat the Leaving Cert this year. 

3,173 – The number of students who sat the Leaving Certificate Applied. 

744 – The number of people repeating the exam. 

29,290  – The number of female students who took the Leaving Certificate. 

28,662  – The number of male students who sat the traditional Leaving Cert programme. 

52.5 – The proportion of accredited grades that were higher than examination grades.

16,666 – The total number of students who studied French. This was the most popular language studied after Irish. 

684 – The number of students who took the Polish exam – this was the most popular non-curricular language.

442  – The number of students who sat the Leaving Cert in Leitrim, the county with the lowest number of people taking the exam.

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66 –  The number of students from Libya who sat the exam, where it has been offered at just one school since 1997. 

15.1 – The percentage of students who sat higher level Maths who got a H1. Up from 8.6 last year.

44 – The percentage of students who sat the Agricultural Science exam. This was the lowest proportion of students who sat the exam in any subject.

14 – The number of students who took the Ancient Greek exam. Half of the students received a H1.

9,124 – Construction Studies remains popular. The number of students taking the higher-level exam increased this year.

25.9 – The percentage of students who got a H1 in Accounting, an increase from 17.9 last year. 

12.4 – The percentage of students who received an O8 in ordinary-level Art – a jump from 5.2% in 2020. 

250 – The number of students took higher level Japanese, a slight increase from last year.