Buried away under the fifteen or sixteen mandatory news stories about Gaza yesterday, a close observer of the state’s national broadcaster might have discovered an article by Emma O’Kelly, RTE’s education correspondent, about the likely impact of this year’s unwinding of grade inflation in the leaving cert:

“Leaving Certificate results have been artificially inflated for the past number of years, ever since the pandemic disrupted learning for so many. This year sees the beginning of an end to that.

While the class of 2025 will have their marks boosted in a post marking adjustment, their boost will be smaller than that of previous years as the State Examinations Commission begins the gradual “glide” back to pre-Covid marking levels that was promised to students.

There is no doubt that this year’s overall results will be lower than last year’s. That is inevitable.

This may well lead to a fall in points. Any such fall will simply be a reflection of this year’s lower Leaving Cert grades.”

The important thing to remember here is that the likely reduction in results this year is not a reflection on this year’s students, but a reflection of the state’s incredibly irresponsible decision in recent years to inflate the grades of students who sat the leaving cert during, and after, the covid pandemic.

It was one of the quieter decisions of the covid era, but one of the strangest ones.

Strange, because the Irish education system allocates third level places on a supply and demand basis, so there was never any risk to college places during the covid era if their results had been a little less impressive. The “points required” for a course in Irish colleges is really just worked out as follows: If there are sixty places available on a course, then the “points” is just the result achieved by the successful applicant with the lowest points. If a course is 540 points and you have 540 points exactly and get into the course, then congratulations: Chances are you are the student with the weakest results in the class.

If results fall generally, then the system will account for this by having the points for most courses set lower than before. It is pure supply and demand – so the decision to “inflate” the grades of students was entirely unnecessary as a matter of “making sure people get their positions”.

And of course the flipside is that inflating grades is a really bad idea, which is precisely why the Government is now seeking to reverse that decision and “reduce” the results this year.

A system for producing educated young people only really works – like money – if people understand the value of the qualification. Grade inflation is terrible for education for the same reason that monetary inflation is terrible for the euro in your pocket.

Why do people value a €50 note? Because they are confident that they can buy things with it. As inflation drives prices up, the value of a €50 note falls.

Similarly, in education, when the state is driving grades up, the value of a good grade falls. In fact, it is worse.

Consider that unlike money, there is a fixed ceiling on leaving certificate grades. 600 is the maximum points you can get, absent some specific courses that award extra points for specific subjects related to specific courses. But the basic point stands: You can’t do much better than 600 points. That was traditionally the level that denoted an “elite” student.

When you inflate the grades, the top level does not rise to 700 points or 800 points. You just end up with more “elite” students who are not really elite at all. Confidence in the Irish education system is therefore slowly eroded.

This, and nothing else, is the reason why that covid-era decision is now being reversed. But why was it ever taken at all?

It was taken because the state wanted to hide the damage they inflicted on young people via lockdowns. Think about that: The state damaged (or feared it had damaged) the education of a substantial part of a whole generation of young people, and then inflated their leaving cert results so that the true extent of what it had inflicted on those people would be hidden from the formal record.

It dressed all this up in the name of “fairness”, pretending that it was doing those same young people a favour. And in the process, it undermined the very exam system that has under-girded Irish education for decades.

One of the very many reasons that the state needs an open and adversarial covid enquiry is that decisions like the leaving cert grade manipulation have never been fully addressed or explained. This was not a decision made to protect public health, or reduce infection, or improve anybody’s health. It was instead a shabby scheme to conceal the negative impact of the state’s own covid policies on young people.

Now it’s being reversed. And RTE can be relied upon, by the same state that funds it, to bury the story under a mountain of updates about Gaza and Ukraine. It’s the kind of thing that would radicalise the public, if only they understood it.