Teachers on Irish children and Irish education – The Irish Times

The Professionals is a series of articles in which three people from one field share their views of…
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https://www.newsbeep.com/273249/

Twice as many Leaving Cert students have results withheld over cheating – The Irish Times

The number of students whose Leaving Certificate and Leaving Cert Applied results were permanently withheld this year because…
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https://www.newsbeep.com/96736/

A Day of Offerings

Today (27th August) is the day that students across Ireland receive offers of places at Third-Level Institutions to start next month. The offers for all courses and all institutions are available on the official CAO website here; they are also widely available elsewhere, including this searchable list.

The official numbers for Maynooth are here. Minimum points required for Maynooth’s – and indeed Ireland’s – most important course, MH206 Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, are 520 this year, up a little from 513 last year. MH204 Physics with Astrophysics is 385, up two points on last year’s 383. MH201 General Science (of which Physics is a part) is on 352 points, up two from 350 last year. Just for comparison, the points for these courses from 10 years ago were: MH206 550; MH204 480; and MH201 435, all significantly higher than this year.

Maynooth’s biggest course (by student numbers) – and indeed the biggest course in Ireland reckoned that way – is the Omnibus Arts programme MH101 which has an entry level this year of just 300 CAO points. Ten years ago it was 390.

It seems the first-round entry points for most courses at Maynooth have not changed dramatically despite the reduction in Leaving Certificate grades this year after several years of artificial inflation over the Covid-19 years. Leaving Certificate results are just one factor in determining the CAO points for a particular course at a particular Institution. Overall the picture is rather complex. Across Ireland, points are up for about 50% of courses and down for about 42%. The CAO points needed for a course is largely a matter of demand versus capacity rather than academic performance. For the last few years Maynooth University has been recruiting more and more students, putting pressure on accommodation, teaching loads and campus space. This strategy will prevent any significant rise in CAO points for the foreseeable future. This is probably happening to some extent across the sector, though Maynooth has a more urgent need for more students: to pay for the legions of new managers it has appointed. Two new €100K managerial jobs have been advertised so far this week…

All this just concerns the first round of offers so things may change significantly over the next week or two. Students now have to decide whether to accept their first-round offer or try to change course. They have until next week to do this. Departments won’t know how many new students they have for a while yet.

#CAO #CAOOffers #LeavingCertificate #MaynoothUniversity #MH101 #MH201 #MH204 #MH206

CAO college offers: Everything you need to know

The class of 2025 should enjoy their achievement first, but here is a look at what happens next…
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https://www.newsbeep.com/86208/

‘I fell 11 points short of the course I wanted and went down the PLC route’ – The Irish Times

Two years ago, when she opened her Leaving Cert results, Amy Moore (20) learned she had narrowly missed…
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https://www.newsbeep.com/83003/

Grades deflate as students get results and number of H1s fall – The Irish Times

Just over 65,000 students received their Leaving Cert results this morning. These are the first to see their…
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https://www.newsbeep.com/76304/

Moving On

Last week I wrote a post about the loose ends of the academic year, one of which concerned my PhD student Aoibhinn, who passed her viva voce examination way back in May, who had to submit a bound copy of the thesis to the relevant office by September 6th so that her degree could be ratified by Faculty and Academic Council. She has now done that, and in the process kindly made me an extra copy of the Authorized Version to put on my shelf:

It will be easy to find on my shelf because it’s a different colour from the others. Aoibhinn will be off to Germany for a postdoctoral fellowship after her conferring ceremony in October.

In subsequent post I mentioned a plethora of meetings to take place this week, all of which went off without much incident. The various Departmental Examination Boards did their business and students will receive their results on September 5th. Students involved in these will be moving on in various ways: some will be graduating, some progressing to the next year of their course and others – though not very many at all – will be leaving without qualifying.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Ireland, students in the Class of 25 have today been receiving their school Leaving Certificate results. As expected, the proportion at the highest grade (H1) is down significantly compared 2024. On the other hand, the total number of students taking  Leaving Certificate examinations is significantly higher  than last year. You can find all the national statistics here.

How these nationwide effects  will work their way through to undergraduate admissions at Maynooth remains to be seen. Applicants will get offers through the CAO system next week; the points required by each higher education institution should be available online on Wednesday 27th. The Irish Times traditionally publishes a pull-out supplement showing all the offers for all courses at all universities across the sector the following day, i.e. on Thursday 28th September.

By the end of next week, therefore, we’ll have some sort of an idea how many students we will have entering the University in September 2025 and can begin moving on to the next academic year. One thing I’ve already got sorted out – way ahead of previous years – is my teaching timetable for Semester 1. Usually I’ve been happy if I had this before the first week of term! My new timetable makes Tuesdays and Thursdays my heaviest teaching days, but gives me Wednesday free for research and other things that I’ve started planning already.

#AoibhinnGallagher #CAO #CentralAdmissionsOffice #ExaminationBoards #LeavingCertificate #LeavingCertificate2025 #MaynoothUniversity #PhD

The Week Ahead

Another weekend is almost over so, after spending most of this afternoon in the garden, I’ve retreated indoors to look at my calendar for the forthcoming week. I find a plethora of Examination Board meetings, one (tomorrow) for our Masters students who did their presentations on Friday and two for undergraduates who took repeat examinations in August (one for Mathematical Physics and one for Engineering, as I happen to have been teaching Engineering Mathematics this year). The two undergraduate boards are both on Thursday. All three of these should be relatively brief, but you never know…

There is another meeting tomorrow, Monday, about organizing our computational physics teaching for the new academic year. The merger of theoretical and experimental physics has given us the chance to coordinate the different computational modules offered by the two previous departments, but we need to make sure the teaching rooms are big enough and the computers have the correct software, etc. Fortunately I’m not actually teaching Computational Physics again until Semester 2 but we have to get it sorted in time for other modules happening in Semester 1.

In between Monday and Thursday I have two whole days with no meetings and no grading to do. I might be able to get on with some research, or at least with writing up some research I’ve already done.

Friday is a big day for the Irish higher education system, in that it’s the day students get their Leaving Certificate results. This year the grade inflation introduced during the pandemic is supposed to begin to unwind, but none of us outside the examination system knows how this will be achieved or what the results will be. If I had to bet I’d say that the CAO points needed for most courses at Maynooth will go down substantially, partly because of the deflation mentioned previously but also because The Management has decided that the University has to recruit more and more students and will drop entry standards as low as it needs to in order to meet its targets.

I don’t know how many students we will end up with for Academic Year 2025/6 but I do know that I will have retired before most of them complete their course. I used to find it a bit scary thinking about retirement, but not any more.

#ComputationalPhyscs #LeavingCertificate #MaynoothUniversity #Physics #postgraduate #undergraduate

Irish universities to change entry to medicine courses to ‘refocus on Leaving Cert achievement’ – The Journal

Irish universities to change entry to medicine courses to ‘refocus on Leaving Cert achievement’  The JournalChanges announced to Hpat…
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https://www.newsbeep.com/4802/