Leaving Certificate: About 6,500 Irish students receive lower grade

About 6,500 students in the Republic of Ireland received a Leaving Certificate grade lower than they should have received.

The mistakes were revealed on Wednesday by the Republic's Education Minister Norma Foley TD.

Ms Foley said two errors had been found in the calculated grades process for the Leaving Cert results and that "shouldn't have happened."

But she said the errors "would not disadvantage any student."

The Leaving Cert is similar to A-Level qualifications taken in Northern Ireland in that it is the final set of formal exams taken by pupils in schools.

As exams were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic students in the Republic of Ireland were awarded their results using "calculated grades."

Around 60,000 students received their Leaving Cert results on 7 September, and many will have used them to go into further or higher education.

Ms Foley said that a mistake in the coding process for awarding students their grades had first been brought to her attention on Wednesday 23 September.

It had been spotted by a Canadian company which had developed statistical software for students' results.

Ms Foley said that had led to a detailed analysis of the problem over the past week.

"It became clear that approximately 6,500 students had received a grade lower than they ought to have received," Ms Foley said.

"While we do not yet have the final figures, our checks to date indicate that the error has affected approximately 7,200 grades."

Therefore around 700 students will have received higher grades than they should have, but Ms Foley said that those grades would not be lowered.

She said that every affected student would be contacted by text message "as soon as it is possible to do so".

They will receive a new statement of results to replace their previous grades.

However, some students will have missed out on higher or further education courses due to the error in their grades.

Ms Foley said that efforts would be made to see if they could be admitted to courses they missed out on.

In Northern Ireland, there was a U-turn in the process for A-Level results after they had been awarded to pupils.

A "calculated grades" system was abandoned and pupils' results were based on detailed predictions from their schools instead.