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LAST UPDATE | 9 Sep 2021
THE LEAVING CERT exams have been underway for almost a century. They are a rite of passage for so many students.
Some believe these exams are necessary to assess the worthiness of our young people so that they may accordingly be squeezed into courses that have a shockingly limited number of places.
The ‘hard reality’ of this year’s exams has meant that even the most hard-working students have been sieved out of their first choices and forced to settle further down their CAO list.
How can we possibly believe that the Leaving Cert and the CAO points race system is the best way to go from here on out when this is happening?
Facing challenges
It wasn’t until the summer before 5th year that I shifted my sights away from Veterinary Medicine towards a career in Medicine. My sister had just been diagnosed with a rare form of Leukaemia that of course shook my own as well as my family’s lives.
The treatment, late nights home, long drives and struggles flowed well into my Leaving Cert studies. It was some time during this dark period that I knew I wanted to be a doctor, someone who could help people like my sister survive these speed bumps in health that knock us off our feet and cause us to question what matters.
This family trauma launched me into action, from the get-go I had my goal in sight, I was ready to do everything in my power to try and grasp my fingers around an intensely sought place in medicine.
I still have nightmares thinking about the late-night study, denying my parents’ worries that I was ‘taking the study too far’ and promising them ‘I’ll go to bed soon’.
Coupled with the Leaving cert stress came the all dreaded Health Professions Admissions Test (HPAT), what many believe to be the biggest hurdle to get over when applying for medicine, a cut-throat exam where the average score out of 300 is 150. The sheer joy I felt when I scored a very competitive 171 (in the 80th percentile) – foolishly the first thing I shouted when I saw I managed it was ‘I’m going to get in, I did it” – that joy has now been grasped and shattered.
From joy to disappointment
That jubilance was furthered even more when I opened my Leaving Cert results on that sleepless Tuesday morning to see that I had scored the sacred 625 points, the sheer happiness that I felt thinking that my hard work had more than paid off was indescribable.
I also later discovered that in the six exams I did sit I scored all top grades, so the accredited grades process actually didn’t inflate my results at all.
This remarkable score combined with my HPAT score left me with a total of 736 points to apply to medicine with a score that would award me with a place in medicine in any university of my choosing in any other year and declare me the first doctor in my family, while also making my school, a DEIS school very proud also.
I was joyous, I was ready to celebrate, and was ready to open the CAO this Tuesday and accept my shiny offer for medicine despite talk of a points rise. I was sure that there was no possibility that points for medicine would soar to the heights I had scored. Of course, I was wrong.
When I opened the impersonal email from the ‘Central Applications Office’ to see that I had been offered my 6th choice the tears and disbelief all came at once. ‘There must be a mistake’ was the mantra that left my lips at least a dozen times as I held my face in my hands. All my efforts, all my hard work, seemingly not good enough.
Telling my family was the hardest part, after having been so confident. Having to tell them that I hadn’t got an offer for medicine, the one thing I dedicated almost every minute of the last two years to achieving was both gut-wrenching and admittedly humiliating.
Medicine in NUIG rose nine points (the equivalent of 45 leaving cert points) to 737, one point more than I achieved. Now I’m faced with the heavy decision of accepting my 6th choice or taking a gap year to try again.
The system is broken
I’m around long enough to have learnt that you don’t always get what you want in life. It’s easy for those who have long finished this exam to exclaim that we, the class of 2021 will have ‘lots more opportunities in the future’ and that we should just get on with it.
That might be a fair assessment was it only a few of us complaining. But, there are hundreds of students like me who despite their best efforts, sweat and tears have not been offered the course they have dreamed of. Something is really wrong this year. There is heartbreak and disappointment throughout the country on the back of the ‘points race’ – a wholly disrespectful phrase to use when discussing the future of a generation in the first place.
I’m sick of hearing TD’s and many others saying insensitive things like ‘that’s the way it is every year, the hard reality is that not everyone can get their first choice’. But when students who put all they have into their work, follow the saying ‘you reap what you sow’ to the best of their abilities and still don’t get rewarded for their work there is something systematically wrong.
Yes, we are coming out the other side, hopefully of a global pandemic. It has upended our society, it’s been tough on everyone, including exam year students. But, we can’t pretend that the Leaving Cert system had been working all along and that 2020/2021 exams are an anomaly. At least, let’s have an honest look now at this flawed finale to an otherwise excellent secondary education system and use this upset, this crisis as an opportunity to fix it.
It is very easy to blame the ‘dual approach’ system that came with this year’s Leaving Certificate, to blame the teachers for being ‘too generous’, but have we ever stopped and thought maybe that these inflated grades aren’t the problem, our focus should be on the system that has not changed majorly since its inception in 1925?
For the first time, we’ve seen people lose their desired course due to random selection despite achieving 625 points. This to me proves that the dreaded ‘points race’ can go no further, the final whistle has blown and the ribbon has been cut.
We need far greater investment into third level from our government, we need college administrators to act instead of calling for a return to a ‘normal’ exam system, we need third level institutions to demand the funds so they may greatly expand capacity, we need the minister for education to finally break away from the ‘traditional leaving cert’ and move towards a system that assesses students on more than just rote learning, but on their ability to adapt and challenge themselves.
In Ireland, we need to be able to offer a place in third-level education to anyone who desires one. We’re one of the few countries that rely solely on exam grades for third-level entry. Most top-tier institutions in other countries require interviews to ensure proof of interest in the desired course, but the Irish system is different, with no questions asked.
Thankfully, my sister has recovered from her illness, in no small part due to the excellent care she received from medical teams in Irish hospitals. Their knowledge and professionalism inspired me to go for medicine, and I believe the best doctors are not just those who scored high points in the Leaving Cert aged 17/18, but those who possess the empathy, emotional intelligence and exemplary work ethic that is required in this job. It’s a shame that the ‘points race’ excludes many deserving candidates from medicine and other courses like this.
Nursing pioneer Lilian Wald once said that ‘reform can be accomplished only when attitudes are changed’. I believe Education Minister Norma Foley’s and many others’ attitudes to the ‘brutal but fair’ Leaving Cert seems are stuck in the past.
In a time where everything we have known has been turned on its head due to the pandemic they too should realise that the Leaving Certificate exams should follow suit and be redrawn from the ground up. It’s time we force them into the present with our voices, demanding a fair system that doesn’t measure our abilities out of a mere number – 625.
Luke Heffernan is a Leaving Cert student from Avondale Community College in Wicklow.
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So this guy got top marks in the Leaving Cert but didn’t get enough in the HPAT test to achieve a place in medicine. This then suggests that those who did get a place got more total points as they did better in the HPAT test. Surely this shows the system is working in that those who did better in a test that is designed to weed out people who have high grades but a poor aptitude for medicine is working.
@Darren Byrne: problem is there is no such thing as an ‘aptitude’ for medicine. Medicine is so broad that it encompasses positions for every type of personality, skill set etc. There may be such thing as an aptitude for GP, psychiatry, surgery etc but an aptitude for ‘medicine’ is a nonsense
@Darren Byrne: no he did get enough in hpat but points rise so much that even after receiving top leaving results and above average hpat, it seems only those getting well above average and top hpat got in
@Alison Kennedy: He got enough to pass it. Nearly half all people sitting it got better than him. And even of those who got better than him not all of them would have got a place. Every other system of admissions in the world has people not get a place on the course they want. Ours in one of the view that guarantees religion, race, class etc.. don’t get factor in to the equation.
@Darren Byrne: where does it say nearly half the people who sat it got better than him??????
@Kia Morgan: There’s the information. 55% of people score 157 or under.
https://hpat-ireland.acer.org/files/HPAT_-_Ireland_2021_Candidate_Performance.pdf
@Darren Byrne: No, so many had the top points that random selection was used.
@Ger McDonnell: actually he said he scored 170 and got 625 in the leaving and that this left him with 736 one less than the 737 need for NUIG. Now to get 625 points in the leaving you have to get an A1 in honours maths. Now I admit I didn’t get an A1 in honours maths so maybe i’m wrong when I add up 170 and 625 and get 795 or perhaps theres some fecal matter of the bovine variety being spewed here.
@Ger McDonnell: Random selection was used in some courses but not for medicine. The whole idea of the HPAT was stop those who had the apptitude for medicine having to compete with those who were achieving maximum points but doing it through a means of taking subjects they were good at, not necessarily ones that were meaningful towards medicine.
@Darren Byrne: actually it was introduced to address the gender imbalance in the leaving cert results which resulted in too few men getting in to medical school, although it was sold as an ‘aptitude’ test
@Ciaran bolger: there still has to be a cutoff. Points. HPAT. Whatever.
@Darren Byrne: he’s making the exact opposite argument to the title.
@Ciaran bolger: is there a gender imbalance in medicine?
Certainly feel your pain here and the system is clearly a joke and in need of reform but if you’re willing do so whatever it takes then there are plenty of other routes into medicine that don’t involve the broken leaving cert system.
Congrats on your brilliant results.
I agree with many of your conclusions – the points race has never been fair and points don’t reflect suitability for a career.
I disagree that it is embarrassing to have to tell people you didn’t get a course. Your friends and family will be proud of your achievement and disappointed because you are disappointed.
Your situation this year is not unique – every year some course has points that are way higher than previous years and people who any other year would have got it, miss out. Hopefully it will allow other avenues (gap year) to open for you.
The q is what replaces LC? Interviews – will be abused – who you know becomes important.
Aptitude tests? Fine but who decides parameters?
The system needs changing but I’m not seeing solutions.
@Augustus hoop:
First of all, well done to the author on getting the maximum score in the exams, but the reality is that others scored better in the HPAT assessment, so claiming to have lost out by virtue of random selection isn’t accurate in this case?
The author also failed to mention the fact that the number of students who received the maximum points has increased 6-fold since the last standard leaving cert took place in 2019. He feels hard done by, yet he didn’t spare a thought for those who applied for places based on results from previous years and how the blatant inflation of this year’s results will impact past and future applicants disproportionately.
The top courses are so competitive every year regardless of COVID, so I genuinely wonder why he didn’t consider the UCAS route to medicine in the UK.
He also claims to understand that you don’t always get what you want in life, but there is more than a touch of sour grapes about the article
@White Chapel: 100% when I read the title of the article I thought maybe this individual has lost out on random selection or something. The truth is that he simply didn’t get enough points – in medicine it’s HPAT + LC and has been for years. Despite claiming that he’s worldly the reality is he simply didn’t do well enough but thinks he deserves a spot because he worked hard and did (admittedly very) well. He can rail all he wants about the unfairness of it but I guess now he actually will learn that there will always be people out there better than you are no matter how hard you try, you don’t always get what you want, no one gives a sh!t what you think you’re entitled to and work does not actually always (or even often) equate to success no matter what you’e told in school.
The leaving cert does nothing to assess or develop critical thinking, problem solving or emotional/ social intelligence (ability to influence, lead and persuade), which in my opinion are the three biggest things that will determine a person’s professional success in life regardless of the type of career you end up in. More and more, rich kids are able to buy their way into courses with grinds and stints in LC schools at the institute which may get the points required for their chosen but does nothing to prepare them for the real world or even university for that matter!
Congrats on an exceptional leaving cert! I also missed medicine in NUIG on random selection back in 2017 where 1% more in my geography exam would have got me in. Like yourself I worked so hard and sacrificed so much for it not to work out in the end. It was crushing at the time but as of today I’m a 4th year at Uni of Leicester and couldn’t be happier with how things worked out. The training is so forward thinking here and I’ve met friends I’ll have for life. Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened, your struggle will stand to you in the long run. I found getting onto the course 10x harder than getting through it. I scored better than 90% of our year in my y3 OSCE last year despite doing far less work than I would have when trying to get onto the course. It will work out for you!
I have traveled and worked in many countries across the world. When I try to explain the 3rd level education system here and how you get into it, I’m normally met with puzzled looks, that one exam decides your life.. it’s wrong!
@Michael: it doesn’t. Different people mature at different stages in life and we have an excellent education system for those that want to go back as a mature student and get degrees. There are also multiple back doors to get into your chosen career if you don’t work hard enough to get a good leaving cert.
Points are a popularity contest.
Random look at Electrical Engineering courses. There are about ten Level 8 courses in Ireland, with points requirement from 328 to 556. After graduation, everyone gets the same qualification and your CV goes into the pile with everyone else. There’s very little to differentiate a student from an IT or a university.
It’s all supply and demand, and an illusion of prestige.
@Cian Martin: They’ll tell you that there’s little to distinguish a graduate from an IT or University accept for employers looking more favourably at students from what they perceive as better institutes.
@Darren Byrne: I suppose it’s down to personal experience, but I’ve never seen anyone choose a lower standard of candidate based on where they went to college. It seems to be more of an old wives tale than an actual practice.
@Darren Byrne: The question is do the preceptions of CAO applicants (and their parents) match the perceptions of employers?
Or are they looking at the label over the door, rather than the skills and attributes of the graduate?
I know many employers who will seek graduates from courses that don’t have the highest CAO points entry in the area as they perceive that the students from some courses are more employable and fit better in the industry.
Would it not make sense to let everyone on a reduced scale try out any course they want for 1 term then , if they like it , or can maintain an expected standard , continue or change courses . Everyone will at least get the chance to try and follow their dream and it would also open some eyes that they just aren’t suited to a specific course
@Shelly: Nice in theory, but a bit eutopian.
Colleges needs to plan well in advance for student numbers. If, for example, a college has have allocated resources for 100 students, how could they cater if 500 turned up? It could never work like that.
Part of the issue is the fixation (employers, parents, schools and pupils) have for getting a degree. Sure the points do not tell anything about personality and therefore career suitability. There should be a points minimum for courses, but that should not change as the demand for places should not eliminate anyome based upon points alone. Interview and aptitude tests should be added to the mix so the person most suites to be a doctor gets on the course and not the person wuth the highest points (same for every course). Also the idea of starting a degree course the day the leaving is finished should be gone, there are other ways to a degree without going to university at 19. We need to rethink the significance of the leaving cert’s points and the exam itself.
The LC and the CAO are 2 separate entities run by 2 separate organisations and should be discussed separately. The LC existed for 50 years before the CAO was formed. They have 2 different functions. The CAO has skillfully squeezed the life out of the LC. So, if this thread is about the CAO and how it runs 3rd level selection, please confine it to that. The LC would be much better without it, free to grow, developand change without constructions from outside.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: Perhaps two separate entities but inextricably linked. The Leaving Cert has become primarily about preparing students to do as well in the CAO points race as possible, you can’t really talk about one without the other
@sean o’dhubhghaill:
That is pure nonsense an I’m sure you know it.
The CAO process was designed to be built on to the leaving cert at a time when there were fewer students and even fewer of those going on to third level. The level of progression directly from second to third level means that there is virtually no separating the two, especially as the Leaving Cert has no standalone value any longer.
All the talk about allowing the LC to grow unconstrained is nonsense
@White Chapel: Don’t you think the LC needs to develop and grow?
@sean o’dhubhghaill:
For starters, I wouldn’t use words like growth and development when talking about a school curriculum, or the exams that follow it.
I have only been asked meaningful questions about my leaving cert twice in my life. The first was by a contractor who offered me an apprenticeship the summer after I finished school, and all others were in the public sector, where many staff have no education beyond the leaving cert (see their job adverts). Nobody else relies on it it in the workforce, so what could it develop into?
Basic education and practical skills are important, but the overemphasis on third level qualifications (many unnecessary) isn’t going away.
This leaves the LC almost on par with the junior cert as a standalone achievement now, so it can’t be diminished much more after this year, that much is for sure. The situation with the inflated results this year has also eroded the credibility of the qualification beyond repair if you ask me.
A step backwards to colleges having their own entrance exams would be a step forwards in this case, leaving the JC and LC as stand alone qualifications. A reform of the entire school system to concentrate on other skills areas would be needed to facilitate this which will never happen in Ireland based on the feeble attempts to overhaul the junior cycle in the past.
No denying the fact that the systems are built to be rigid and unchangeable
There’s no doubt this year’s leaving cert students have had a rough ride and on top of all the upheaval there is still a massive problem with getting accommodation and if they do find it it’s like another mortgage for their parents.
Although the CAO process is limited and education generally is not very fair, I think this year’s process should be adjusted to help students by reducing the stresses.
Instead of a “Predicted Grade”, students should be provided with a “Minimum Expected Grade” (normalised to 1 grade below expected LC performance).
This fallback would significantly reduce the stress and anxiety of the exams, whilst retaining its fairness and impartiality.
The 2021 year had less exam stress but less fairness. The reduction of the fallback option by 1 grade (correctly normalised) would provide the fairness of the traditional leaving cert but with much less stress.
@Alan Mulcahy:
This idea that students some get some sort of cushion or stress barrier is crazy, especially as the grades awarded this year are already disproportionately higher than in any other previous year. This is a direct result of all the lobbying and steps taken to shield teachers and schools who were afraid of handing out low (or even realistic) grades.
The consequences of this will be paid by future applicants who face elevated points targets and will have to compete against 2021 students who take a year out and opt to use their inflated grades in later years.
They should double/triple the number of places on medicine courses. Would that take away from the ‘prestige’ of the courses though? Is that why they won’t do it ?
@Virgil: I suppose the issue is with the number of lecturer’s, tutors, labs, placements, equipment etc. But I think you’re right. The govt already has initiatives to get jobseekers into courses where there is a skills gap. Shouldn’t the govt incentivize universities to expand their courses too?
Start ringing the British universities
I agree with every single word.
I mean, is there anybody with any sense at all still arguing for the reinstatement of this archaic form of certifying the successful completion of secondary education? It’s hard to believe that that’s what this circus is actually supposed to be!
The OECD have said it, the NCCA has said it, the NAPD have said it, teachers have said and most importantly students have said it. We know that the educational experience of young people in this country is seriously diminished by this exam system. It needs to be dismantled and replaced by a process of assessment and certification at second level that actually supports learning, critical thinking and independence.
@Elisabeth Butler: 2/2 College entry needs to be decoupled from this so that college places can be offered to those most deserving of a place.
Many advocates of the leaving cert argued that students who managed to access high points courses with lower points due to accredited grades would drop our or not manage the course because they wouldn’t be able for it. This has not been the case! Data on dropout rates and exams has shown that far fewer students actually dropped out and the exam results for this cohort were in line with other years.
So, I urge the author to use their voice to ensure that this is not forgotten and another generation of young people’s education is not reduced to prepping for a test for two years just to funnel them into college courses. Please keep fighting for this!
Part of this may be due to competing with last years cohort also, many of whom put college on hold to avoid a covid college experience.
Yes
The hpat is a tough exam and the max score is around 220 out of 300 marks. This exam was run in 2021 despite the pandemic and no one is questioning its validity.
The problem with the leaving cert in the pandemic is that it was simplified to the extent that it was no longer a competitive exam. But it was still being used as the basis of the cao competitive system.
Going easy on the students may have been wise in relation to the wellbeing of many students, but it has had the opposite impact on some.
If entry into a course is competitive then the LC exam needs to be too, so maybe there should be an option to sit an even harder exam – at least for high point courses.
In the case of medicine the hpat would have served this purpose if it was given a much higher weighting in relation to the LC.
You may have dodged a bullet. You won’t appreciate this advice for about 10 years but go into IT. Don’t do medicine, it’s a shi7 life. Crazy long hours, massive instability , poor pay, forced emigration. You seem smart, could get great job with lots of perks and flexibility in that sector. Don’t waste the best years of your life propping up a collapsing health service that will eat you up and spit you out. Take it from someone that knows
Don’t give up, apply to a UK university, you will have no problem getting a place in medicine. You did exceptionally well, don’t settle for less than you have earned and deserve. Let us all know how you get on , best wishes to your sister too.
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