Students to get new college offers after winning appeals

Hundreds of Leaving Certificate students can expect new college offers this week after successfully appealing their results in this year's exams.

The outcome of the appeals by 5,959 candidates is being made known to students today, by the State Examination Commission.

About one in 10 candidates appealed against 10,333 grades, leading to 2,110 upgrades, or 0.6pc of all grades awarded.

A total of eight results were downgraded in the appeal process. The figures are broadly in line with previous years

For many students, a better grade, or grades, provides enough CAO points to get an offer that they should have received in August or September.

New offers being made for the current year will be processed by the CAO and should arrive on Friday.

Students receiving a new offer will have to decide whether to take it, and start the course several weeks into the academic year.

In some cases, the college will offer the place on a deferred basis and will make contact directly with the student.

In the past, students have successfully challenged a college decision not to offer the place in the current year.

As usual Higher Level English, the single most popular exam after Ordinary Level maths, accounted for most appeals at 1,603 from 33,007 candidates, resulting in 201 upgrades.

Students appealing results in Higher Level Irish had a relatively high success rate with 216 upgrades from 927 appeals.

- Katherine Donnelly

Irish Independent