Some 33,301 leaving certificate grades were appealed this year on behalf of 12,215 students. Only 18 of those students received increased grades. Was it worthwhile to hold an appeals process, thereby giving these students false hope? Will the leaving certificate resits take place in November now that we are under a level 5 lockdown?

As far as I know the leaving certificate resits will go ahead. Schools are going to stay open, so I imagine the exams will go ahead as planned. If there is any change we will certainly alert the House. The appeals process was a useful exercise for the 18 students that got an upgrade, though not for the vast majority of students who appealed. There was a very different leaving certificate system this time. In previous years an appeal would have involved re-examining an exam paper and marking it again. The authorities would not only check that marks had been totted up correctly, but also that answers had been marked fairly in the first place. It was very different in 2020. There were no exam papers to recheck. Marks were solely based on the calculated grade. For obvious reasons there was always going to be a smaller number of successful appeals.