Two live lessons every week for Leaving Cert Ordinary Level, at their own time with their own teacher. Ordinary Level is a course in its own right rather than Higher Level with the difficult parts removed, and it is taught here that way.
Seven days free. No card required.
The whole course, taught across the year rather than crammed at the end. Every lesson is recorded and indexed by topic, so any method can be found again the night before a test.
Review weeks at Halloween, Christmas and Easter, mock support in February, and pre-exam revision every week to the exam.
Usually not in those words, and usually not by anyone who meant it. It accumulates: a few years of being the quiet one in a room pitched slightly above you, a few tests that came back worse than the effort deserved, and a conclusion forms that has nothing to do with ability.
That conclusion costs marks directly, which is the part worth knowing. At Ordinary Level, attempting things is most of the game. The marking scheme pays low partial credit for a relevant start, and a blank part earns nothing at all, so the single biggest source of lost marks at this level is not difficulty. It is students deciding in advance that they cannot do a question and leaving it empty.
So the class is taught on the assumption that everybody in it can do the course, because they can. It is a course designed to be done. At Leaving Cert, Ordinary Level runs at its own time with its own teacher, so nobody is sitting through material aimed at somebody else.
The course rewards security far more than cleverness. Number and basic algebra, meaning fractions, percentages, rearranging a formula and solving a linear equation, turn up inside almost every question on both papers. A student who is slow and uncertain there is slow and uncertain everywhere, whatever the topic is called.
Beyond that, the recurring earners are the ones people underrate: statistics and probability, area and volume, coordinate geometry of the line, and the trigonometric ratios. These are the topics where a student who has practised the standard shape of the question can score reliably, every year, without needing anything to go right on the day.
Exam technique matters as much as at Higher Level, for a different reason. Two marks a minute is the same arithmetic on both papers. What differs is that at Ordinary Level there is usually time to finish, so marks lost to blank parts are pure waste rather than a casualty of the clock.
No, and it is worth saying plainly, because the way this decision gets talked about does real damage.
The honest case for staying at Higher Level is the 25 bonus CAO points, awarded at H6 or above, so if a student is on track to pass Higher then staying is usually worth it, and the Higher Level page makes that argument. But "on track to pass Higher" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. A student who is not, and who spends two years in a class moving faster than they can follow, does not collect the bonus and does not enjoy the maths either. They also frequently do worse in their other subjects, because Higher Level maths eats the study time.
A strong Ordinary Level grade is a good outcome. It is a better outcome than a poor Higher Level one, it usually costs less of the rest of the Leaving Cert, and for most course choices it is entirely sufficient. The students who do best after moving down are the ones who move early, in fifth year with time to consolidate, rather than in March of sixth year.
If you are genuinely unsure which side of that line your child is on, that is a conversation worth having with their teacher and with us before deciding. We would rather tell you they should stay at Higher than sell you the wrong class.
Seven days free first, with no card. Cancel any time, no joining fee.
Recordings and notes, no live lessons.
or €290 for the academic year
Two live lessons a week, plus everything above.
or €690 for the academic year
Everything in Academy, three mock papers marked a year, and an extra live session each month on whatever students vote to cover.
or €990 for the academic year
Completely. Its own teacher, its own weekly slot, its own recordings and its own discussion board. Students never sit in a Higher Level class or see Higher Level material by accident.
No. The course is taught in full and to the marking scheme. Topping Ordinary Level is a real target, and it needs the same precision a H1 does: the standard question shapes done reliably, and no marks left on the table.
It is the most common thing we meet, and it is usually a history of being in the wrong room rather than a fact about the student. It also takes a while to shift, so the recordings matter: being able to watch something again privately, without anyone seeing that you needed to, is often what starts it.
Earlier than most families do it. A student who moves in fifth year has time to consolidate and usually finishes with a much stronger grade than one who moves in the spring of sixth year, when the Ordinary Level course has already been covered by their class.
For most students, yes, and the reason is confidence rather than content. Being in a room where the material is pitched at you, and where the recording means nobody sees you watch it twice, does something an hour a week rarely does. The exception is a student who has fallen a very long way behind and needs the basics rebuilt from scratch, who will get further one to one than in any class, ours included.