A deferred college place for LC Exam students

The students taking the Leaving Certificate exams will be offered a deferred college place if they happened to receive a higher CAO offer than they already have.

The State Examinations Commission have announced that students who attend the exams in November will be offered a college place for 2021/22 academic year after the results are out in February.

The SEC has also confirmed that any first-year college student who get a higher CAO offer will not lose fee charges or grants by switching to their new course the following year.

Exam are scheduled as follows – one exam on every weekday evening and two on Saturdays and Sundays – and they extend over four weeks in November and December.

Students can register from Monday morning till 5 pm on Friday and there ae no fees charged.

Exams will be conducted according to the public health advice. The examinations start at 5.30pm each weekday evening, and at 9.30am and 2pm at weekend days.

Full timetables for the examinations will be published on the State Examinations Commission website on Monday morning.

All candidates who had entered for the Leaving Certificate/LCA examinations prior to their postponement can register.

The SEC says it is intended that candidates will sit their examinations in their former schools, as they would have had the exams proceeded in June. 

The format, content and structure of individual exam papers will be similar to those of previous years. The exams will consist only of written papers as it is not practical to conduct examinations in oral or practical components, or to try to complete unfinished coursework.

In the case of five Leaving Certificate subjects, the SEC will mark coursework which was completed prior to the school closures.

It says these marks will be included in the grading of those subjects. The subjects are; Home Economics, the LCVP Portfolio, Design and Communication Graphics, the PE Physical Activity Project, and Engineering practical coursework.

In all other subjects, candidates will be awarded grades solely on the written papers. The arrangement, announced in March intended to award full marks to students in place of oral language and music performance tests.

But it was cancelled when the summer exams were postponed on May 8th and the system of Calculated Grades was introduced.

Planned Junior Cycle written exams for adult learners and early school leavers will also be conducted in November, beginning on November 16th.

The State Examinations Commissions says will communicate details of the exams to schools, and additional information for Leaving Cert candidates will be available at www.examinations.ie when registration opens on Monday.

The results will be published by early February. The exams are open to students who have already received calculated grades. They will be credited with whichever grade is highest.

Candidates can register for the exam via the Calculated Grades Student Portal, available at www.examinations.ie and at Gov.ie/leaving certificate.

Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA) candidates can enter by emailing [email protected] anytime over next week’s five-day Monday to Friday period.