"Your school will not determine the results that you get through standardisation this year."

Historical school-by-school data will be removed from the Leaving Cert calculated grades system, to ensure that certain schools are not given special treatment over others. As a result, over 83% of Leaving Cert results this year are either unchanged or increased from the previous school-estimated grade, meaning 17% of students will receive a lower grade than they would have without this change. Minster for Education Norma Foley announced the news at a briefing on Tuesday afternoon, after the decision was approved by Cabinet. She said: "The Government's decisions today will provide additional reassurances to Leaving Certificate 2020 students that their unique situation has been understood and treated fairly. "Equity and fairness must be at the heart of everything we do as a society. "Taking out the school-by-school historical data from the standardisation process removes any risk that a Leaving Certificate student's results can be impacted by the performance of Leaving Certificate classes in his or her school in previous years. "Your school will not determine the results that you get through standardisation this year." It was also announced that there will be 1,250 additional places in high-demand programmes in third-level institutions, on top of 1,415 already announced under the Human Capital Initiative. Speaking at the briefing, Simon Harris said: "Providing more places on high-demand courses gives us scope to ease anxiety, reduce uncertainty and demonstrate the ability of the education system to respond to student concerns." Leaving Cert results are due out on 7 September.