As the release of the CAO offers draws near, students and parents are flooding The Irish Times live helpdesk (irishtimes.com/helpdesk) with inquiries relating to the expected points increase across courses. The most important component in determining the CAO points score of that final place to be offered is the total number of places the college offers in a specific programme. The mean average CAO points score increase in student performance at higher level in 2020 is about 10 per cent. If the number of places on offer from colleges remain constant, then one might expect CAO points for each programme to increase sharply. For the 20,000 CAO applicants who carry results forward from 2019 and previous years, they are at a huge disadvantage.

Source: The Irish Times September 10, 2020 01:52 UTC