At 10am this Friday, 60,000 Leaving Cert students will collect their exam results after finally completing three interrupted and uncertain years of secondary school education during the pandemic.
Minister for Education Norma Foley has said the final grades issued this week will be “no lower in aggregate” than last year’s record-breaking results. However, this move, along with other measures like the predicted grades used to keep the Leaving Cert going during Covid-19, have produced an unwanted side effect: massive grade inflation.
Students now need more CAO points than ever to secure a spot in many university courses. But grades can only rise so high, so how and when will the marking system return to normal?
And even if students do secure a place at university, how will these young people find a place to live in a country grappling with a severe accommodation crisis?
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“I think about it all the time. If I don’t get my accommodation, I cant go,” Leaving Cert student Leah Quigg told the In the News podcast. “It’s on everyone’s minds… it’s having somewhere to lie down at the end of the night.”
Today on In the News, we discuss the class of 2022′s battle to reach university.
In The News is presented by Sorcha Pollak and Conor Pope and produced by Declan Conlan, Suzanne Brennan and Aideen Finnegan.
