Nearly two thousand Mayo students to receive Junior Certificate results 

1,907 students across Mayo will receive their Junior Certificate results today. They are among the 73,336 candidates are receiving their results today nationally.

Dr. Áine Moran, Principal of the Sancta Maria College in Louisburgh wished to extend her congratulations to all the students who will be receiving their results today, as well as all the teachers, SNAs and staff that have worked so hard with them over the past three years. 

She explains that “the way the exams are formulated now is to test analytical skills and communication skills and more higher order thinking. So the exams are no longer formulated in a way that it's just about rote learning or regurgitation.”

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“The exams are no longer really predictable, and it's much more individualized in the way that you respond. One person might do just as well as another person would have taken a completely different approach to answering the question.”

“That has given great freedom to people. In Sancta Maria College, we concentrate on giving students a huge subject choice for junior cycle, so that they're involved in subject areas that they're enjoying, and therefore it's much easier to acquire those kinds of skills of research and group work and analytical thinking and creative processes.”

Appeals Process

Each school has discretion over when the results will be given out to the students and exercise a common-sense approach in doing so. They are available to each school in digital format through the SEC’s Schools Portal, before being printed out for the students.  

Unlike the Leaving Certificate, appealing the Junior Certificate result  can only be made through the School Authority.

The State Examinations Commission (SEC) states that “the School Authority must consider that the examination result attained by the candidate is significantly at variance with the result expected. Schools must return their applications by 5pm on Tuesday 14 October. A fee of €32 applies to each subject appealed which is refunded in the event of an upgrade. Details of the process have been provided to the school with their results.”

“The SEC does not accept appeal applications directly from candidates, parents or individual teachers.”

English short story not a best seller 

One of the big talking points from earlier this summer was the short story question on the English Higher-level paper.

The SEC reveals “at the time of, and subsequent to the examination, the SEC received feedback that many schools had not taught the short story.”

This resulted in a “significant number of candidates answered this question poorly or omitted it entirely.”

Given the scale of students involved and to ensure fairness, the SEC awarded all candidates a minimum of 10 marks out of a possible 15, with a scaled marking approach used to award higher marks based on the standard of the candidate response.

“This approach has ensured fairness to those candidates who answered the question while ensuring that those candidates who did not respond to the question are not disadvantaged.”

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Good preparation for Leaving Certificate

ASTI President Padraig Curley congratulated all the students receiving their Junior Cycle results today and said that it is “an important step for students, giving them their first experience of a State examination.”

 “Today students will be provided with an independent and objective set of results in relation to their learning and efforts over the first three years of their second-level education. The Junior Cycle exam experience will help greatly in terms of your preparation for the Leaving Certificate exam situation itself. Well done on completing the Junior Cycle, your teachers are extremely proud of you today.”

The most recent OECD PISA report shows that 15-year-olds in Ireland rank first out of 37 OECD countries for reading literacy. Ireland ranks 7th out of 37 OECD countries for performance in maths, and is in 8th place for performance in science. Ireland is one of 10 countries highlighted in the PISA report for high levels of equity for students.

However, Ireland remains at the bottom of the league for investment in education. The OECD report Education at a Glance 2025 positioned Ireland in last place out of 37 countries for government expenditure on second-level education as a percentage of GDP.