Leaving Certificate students will not receive their results until September 7th, the Department of Education has confirmed.
In May it was announced that Leaving Cert exams would be cancelled and replaced with 'calculated grades' due to Covid-19 challenges.
The Department of Education's online portal for students to opt to receive those calculated results will open for registrations on Monday, July 20th.
While calculated grades were originally hoped to be released as close as possible to the standard mid-August release date, the results will now be available just before first round offers from the CAO are issued on September 11th.
Minister for Education Norma Foley announced the move yesterday evening and said the Department had made every effort to issue the calculated grades as close as possible to the usual time-frame:
"The purpose of the calculated grades system is to arrive at the grade that each student would have achieved if the examinations had taken place as normal and that the results are in line with previous years.
"Over 450,000 individual grades have to be prepared and checked... to ensure that the grades are as fair and equitable as possible.
It is really important to me that we deliver these Calculated Grades to the highest possible standards, and that the outcomes are fair to students. The date of September 7th allows us to achieve this."
However Labour's Education Spokesperson Aodhan O'Riordan said this delay shows the Department's contempt for students:
"There is incredible disrespect from the Department of Education, in communicating these things with the student body, and we have a new Minister for Education, and the first thing that she has done is manage to completely mishandle the situation."
Over 61,000 Leaving Certificate students are eligible to receive Calculated Grades.
All students, whether they opted to receive the Calculated Grades or not, will have the option of taking the Leaving Certificate examination later in the year.
The State Examinations Commission stated that it hoped to be able to run the Leaving Certificate examinations during the month of November.
A small number of students will not be able to receive a Calculated Grade for all of their subjects, including if they were self-taught.
