Yesterday I attended my last two Examination Boards for the year at Maynooth University. one for graduating MSc students and another for undergraduate repeat students in Engineering (which I attend because I’m teaching a mathematics course they do). That, more or less, is the end of the business (for me) for the 2025/6 academic year. No sooner is that done, however, than preparations for the start of the 2026/7 teaching session begins, as we wait to find out how many new students we will be admitting to our courses in September.
Today’s the day that over 70,000 school students across Ireland received their Leaving Certificate Results. As always there will be joy for some, and disappointment for others. The headline news relating to these results is that the proportion of students receiving the top grades in higher level examinations (i.e. H1) is down significantly from 11.7% last year to 10.1% this year. This fall is because various adjustments that were made during the Covid-19 pandemic are gradually being wound down. After next year they will disappear altogether.
I thought I would have a quick look at the results for subjects relevant to Physics:
| Subject | Number (2025) | Number (2026) | % Grade 1 (2025) | % Grade 1 (2026) |
| Maths A | 23540 | 25157 | 11.4 | 8.1 |
| Maths G | 33364 | 35444 | 6.1 | 4.2 |
| Physics A | 6592 | 6855 | 19.5 | 15.6 |
| Physics G | 1154 | 1335 | 5.5 | 4.5 |
| Applied Maths A | 1861 | 1954 | 25.9 | 20.9 |
| Applied Maths G | 34 | 50 | 5.9 | 4 |
(A is higher level and G is ordinary level). Please note that this year’s numbers are provisional and may change as a result of appeals, etc. The full details can be found here.
You can see that the number of students taking these subjects has increased since last year, but in all cases the percentage getting top grades has fallen. Note the very low numbers in the last row, meaning that most students who take Applied Mathematics do the Higher level version. The numbers mean that exactly 2 people got the top grade in 2026 and 2025!
Comparison with earlier years is interesting. Here are the H1 percentages for Mathematics, Physics and Applied Mathematics since 2019:
| Mathematics | Physics | Applied Mathematics | |
| 2019 | 6.4 | 10.9 | 16.5 |
| 2020 | 8.6 | 16.1 | 29.9 |
| 2021 | 15.1 | 21.1 | 40.9 |
| 2022 | 18.1 | 23.7 | 29.3 |
| 2023 | 11.2 | 21.2 | 31.0 |
| 2024 | 12.6 | 20.7 | 28.4 |
| 2025 | 11.4 | 19.5 | 25.9 |
| 2026 | 8.1 | 15.6 | 20.9 |
You can see that although these percentages have declined from their respective peaks they remain well above 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
It is also worth noting that the number of students taking Physics (A) nationally seems to be recovering from a sharp drop in 2022-4, the numbers being: 6583(2019); 7037(2020); 7210(2021); 6487(2022); 6143(2023); 6009 (2024); 6592 (2025); and 6855 (2026).
Anyway, now that the results are out there will be a busy time until next Wednesday (26th August) when the CAO first round offers go out. That is when those students wanting to go to university find out if they made the grades and university departments find out how many new students (if any) they will have to teach in September. Incidentally, colleagues in the UK might be interested to know that, here in Maynooth, departments have no say in admissions decisions: these are all made centrally.
P.S. When I was a little kid we used to call a “Certificate” a “Stiff Ticket”. I just thought you would like to know that.
In the Dark 