Will the meteoric point rises repeat this year?

Paddyg96

Just wondering in general do you think the points will rise again this year overall? Last year they rose ridiculously and leaving points in general were at an all time high so was thinking that board of education might try toughen the exams or correction a little to make sure the same doesn't happen again.

I know it's impossible to predict but just speculate!

My top two were Computer science and business in TCd which rose from 465 to 500 and commerce in UCD which rose from 490 to 500


I got 495

rainbowtrout

1. It's impossible to predict.

2. The points students get have nothing to do with with the CAO offers. If there are more students in the system competing for the same number of places then points tend to rise.

If a certain subject area e.g. medicine, engineering, primary school teaching etc, is popular and continues to increase in popularity then the increased demand means points rise. However if you look at the percentage of students getting an A, B, C, etc in each subject it's roughly the same every year.

Students bailed out of construction related courses wholesale from 2008 onwards when the economy crashed. At the same time, a lot of lads (mainly) who would have done construction, turned to agriculture and the points went through the roof, from a low of 315 around 2006 to 465 (last two years).


Points for courses with a large intake, Arts, Science, Undenominated Engineering, Business tend not to fluctutate too much from year to year. You may notice a course rising more, simply because it's a course you are interested in and there is a lot of interest in it in general in Leaving Certs.



Have a look at the stats for the numbers sitting English for the last 11 years:

2005 51000
2006 47000
2007 48000
2008 49000
2009 51000
2010 51500
2011 51500
2012 50500
2013 50000
2014 52000
2015 53200

I picked English because it's a core subject so is fairly representative of the number of students sitting the LC overall. The numbers bottomed out in 2006. There's a couple of reasons for that, there was a dip in population around then ( I remember we had a very small LC group in comparison to the five years before them and the five years after them). Also there was possibly an effect of students (mainly boys) leaving school before their Leaving to go work on building sites etc in Celtic Tiger times. Population since then has risen, a natural rise was due anyway, but also as a result of immigration, and because the economy has crashed more students are staying on in school because there is nowhere else to go and no other opportunities available to them. So that's more students chasing roughly the same number of places. So demand rises and the points go up.

If say 1% of all student score 575 or higher in the LC and mainly aim for the high points courses, then in 2014 there would have been 520 students of that calibre. If 1% of students scored like than in 2015 then there would be 532 students of that calibre. That's 12 more students taking up places on high points courses, meaning less places for students with lower points, so points necessary for a course in 2014 might not be good enough in 2015. Nothing to do with the way the SEC mark, but simply because there are more students.