🇮🇪 Ireland · Qualification
Leaving Certificate revision,
with a team behind it
Leaving Certificate, State Examinations Commission
Ireland's terminal secondary qualification and the basis of every CAO offer.
The Leaving Certificate is examined by the State Examinations Commission over two years, with almost all of the assessment landing in one June series. Subjects are taken at Higher or Ordinary level, and results convert to CAO points from your best six.
Leaving Certificate at a glance
- Qualifications
- Leaving Certificate (Established) · Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme (LCVP) · Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA)
- Grading
- Higher level H1 to H8, Ordinary level O1 to O8, in bands of ten percentage points. H1 is the top grade.
- Exam series
- Written examinations from early June, with oral and practical components earlier in the spring.
- Results
- Results are issued in late summer, with CAO offers following shortly after.
Worth knowing about Leaving Certificate
The specifics below are the ones that change how you should plan. Always check the current specification with your school or the awarding body — specifications get revised, and the version you are entered for is the one that counts.
Higher level Maths carries a 25-point bonus on any grade from H6 upwards, which is why so many students stay at Higher level even when it is a struggle.
Oral and practical components in Irish, the modern languages and the sciences are sat in spring, months before the written papers — a second deadline that regularly gets forgotten in June-focused plans.
Only your best six subjects count towards CAO points, so a seventh subject is insurance rather than an additional gain.
Project and coursework components in subjects like Design and Communication Graphics and Home Economics are submitted well before the written series.
Papers are national and have a long published history, which makes past-paper practice unusually predictive here.
What each teacher does for Leaving Certificate
All eight are AI, and we say so plainly. What is real is the output: sessions in your calendar, sources in your book, citations checked, cards queued until you can recall them cold.
Daniel · Study planner
Takes your Leaving Certificate subjects and works backwards from the real timetable. Written examinations from early June, with oral and practical components earlier in the spring. Sessions land in your calendar as real events with reminders, and the plan adjusts when a week goes wrong.
Sarah · Subject tutor
Explains at the depth Leaving Certificate actually assesses, with worked examples, then asks the questions that check you have understood rather than just followed along.
Tommy · Quizzer
Turns each concept you get into a spaced-repetition card and brings it back at widening intervals until you can produce it cold. Higher level H1 to H8, Ordinary level O1 to O8, in bands of ten percentage points. H1 is the top grade. Most of the gap between where you are and where you want to be is recall under pressure, not understanding.
Margaret · Librarian
Finds sources, summarises them at three depths, imports them into your subject book and formats the citations in MLA, APA, Chicago or Harvard.
Eleanor · Writing coach
Reads your extended answers and essays for structure and argument, and shows you where a marker stops following you — without rewriting it for you.
Charles · Citation checker
Checks every in-text citation points at a real entry in your bibliography, and flags the ones that do not before a marker does.
Penny · Proofreader
Catches grammar, spelling, and the sentences that technically parse but will not survive a tired examiner.
Sam · Accountability
Tracks what you actually did against what the plan said, and tells you early when Leaving Certificate preparation has slipped far enough to need a different plan rather than more willpower.
Subjects students bring us
These are the Leaving Certificate subjects we see most. The teachers are not limited to them — if you are sitting something rarer, tell them during onboarding and the plan covers it the same way.
- English
- Irish
- Mathematics
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Physics
- History
- Geography
- Business
- Economics
- Accounting
- French
- German
- Spanish
- Home Economics
- Design and Communication Graphics
Leaving Certificate: fair questions
How many subjects should I take?
Six count, so most students take six or seven. A seventh is a hedge against one subject going wrong, but it is only worth it if it does not dilute the other six — that trade-off is worth deciding early and then leaving alone.
When should I start revising for the orals?
Earlier than feels natural, because they arrive in spring while everything else still feels distant. Daniel schedules oral practice from the autumn, and Sarah will hold conversation practice in Irish, French, German or Spanish at the level you are sitting.
Are past papers still the best preparation?
For the Leaving Cert, they are hard to beat — the papers are national, consistent in structure and long-established. The gap past papers do not fill is the recall work in between, which is where Tommy's spaced repetition earns its place.
Start your Leaving Certificate plan today.
Seven days free, no credit card. Ninety seconds of onboarding and Daniel has your Leaving Certificate subjects, your exam dates and a week you can actually follow.
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