Leaving Cert: The mix ups, leaks, and cancellations

Irish Examiner

03-06-2025

A rite of passage for thousands of students across the country each year, the smooth execution of State exams is taken for granted, more often than not.
It involves the delivery and distribution of thousands of scripts to exam halls across the country, as well as their collection and the redistribution for corrections.
We've taken a look back on some of the years where the State exams stood out more than others due to mistakes, leaks, and cancellations.
The English paper mix up and rescheduled exam
In 2009, a major probe was launched by the State Examinations Commission (SEC) after it emerged that an exam official had handed out the wrong exam paper to Leaving Cert students.
Students at a school in Drogheda had the wrong English paper placed on their desks for just 25 seconds. Instead of paper one, the students had been given paper 2.
However brief, it was just long enough for them to identify the exam's key topics, like which three poets would appear on the paper the next day.
With the internet in its infancy, the potential was there for its content to spread to thousands of students via online exam message boards. The SEC was forced to revert to its backup papers and to reschedule English Paper 2 for a Saturday morning. It was later reported that the blunder cost approximately €1.7m.
Human error to blame for mistakes on papers
In August 2013, the SEC confirmed a series of embarrassing mistakes that appeared on the year's Leaving Cert papers due to human error.
A review found as many as 13 mistakes across 2013's Leaving and Junior Cert papers, the most serious of which related to a question on the Leaving Certificate Higher Level math paper.
This trigonometry question, worth 10% of the paper's overall marks, gave the wrong value for an angle. Approximately 4% of the students sitting the exam were adversely affected due to the mistake, according to the SEC.
The SEC blamed the errors on the loss of experienced senior staff.
"We are embarrassed, but not just embarrassed, we certainly apologise first and regret what has happened and the impact it may have had on candidates," former SEC chief executive Dick Landford told RTÉ's Morning Ireland at the time.
"Each of the undetected mistakes was in fact a human error,' he said, adding that somebody 'just made a mistake'.
"People make mistakes, it's as simple as that."
High Court case overhauls appeal system
In 2018, 18-year-old Rebecca Carter from Co Wexford sued the State Examinations Commission for its decision not to re-check her points score in time to allow her to obtain a place at UCD.
Justice Richard Humphreys ruled in her favour, saying that had Ms Carter's points been correctly added up, she would have achieved an extremely high mark that would easily have qualified her for a place on the vet medicine course.
The Judge said the situation faced by Ms Carter was highly unfair, describing the appeals process as 'unfit for purpose'.
The outcome of her case led to significant changes with appeals, shortening the process by three weeks and allowing successful students to take up their college course that academic year rather than deferring.
Covid cancellations and algorithm woes
After public health restrictions forced the postponement and eventual cancellation of the State exams during the summer of 2020, 'calculated grades' were instead introduced for thousands of anxious students.
While the decision was taken at the time to allow students to move on to college and further education, the introduction of 'calculated grades' was far from straightforward.
Right around the time students were logging into lectures and attending virtual orientation weeks in late September, then Minister for Education Norma Foley announced that errors had been discovered in the calculated grades system.
The mistakes affected approximately 7,200 students who received incorrect grades.
Random selection post-pandemic
The CAO process can be cruel, with sometimes a margin as narrow as a single point determining a student's entry to their dream college course.
As grade inflation increased due to several years of adjustments to the Leaving Cert exams post pandemic, so too have instances of 'random selection' determining course selection amongst the students who achieved the maximum CAO marks available - 625.
In 2024, 23 courses nationwide allocated places through a lottery, many of which required exceptionally high points.
'Cruel' Maths paper leaves students in tears
The Maths paper 1 exam in 2023 prompted a barrage of complaints from students, teachers and principals who felt the paper was unfair.
Held on a Friday afternoon, many students took to social media to voice their upset over the paper, and worries that paper 2 would put them through a similar situation come Monday.
The SEC later confirmed that the feedback would be brought to the attention of the Chief Examiner. Commentary and correspondence on the exams from students, parents, teachers, professional bodies, and other interested parties is a normal part of the examinations process, a spokesman for the SEC said at the time.