If your child is in sixth year now and taking Chemistry or Physics, they are in the first group of students in the country to sit these subjects in their redeveloped form. The courses were first taught from September 2025 and the first examinations fall in June 2027. That is this academic year.
There is no cohort ahead of them to ask, which is uncomfortable. Here is what is actually known.
Which science subjects changed, and when do they get examined?
Biology, Chemistry and Physics were all in the first group of redeveloped Leaving Certificate subjects, first taught from September 2025, alongside Business, Arabic, Ancient Greek, Latin and two entirely new subjects, Drama, Film and Theatre Studies, and Climate Action and Sustainable Development. That was confirmed by the NCCA in October 2024.
The rule for working out exam years is simple. A cohort enters fifth year in the September a subject is first taught and sits the Leaving Certificate two years later. So students who began in September 2025 sit these papers in June 2027.
Which means the current sixth years are the first ones through. Their teachers are learning the course alongside them, and honest teachers say so.
How much of the grade is now coursework?
At least forty per cent. Citizens Information, in guidance last updated on 14 September 2026, states that the additional assessment components in the redeveloped Leaving Certificate are worth at least forty per cent of the available marks in a subject. The Irish Times reported in April 2025 that a maximum of sixty per cent is available for written examinations.
Forty per cent is a floor, and some redeveloped subjects sit above it. For the exact split in Chemistry or Physics, the subject specification published by the NCCA is the authority, and your child’s teacher will have it.
I am being careful here deliberately. A parent who repeats a weighting they read on a blog, and plans a year around it, can do real damage. Ask the teacher for the actual number.
Is the coursework in science a lab experiment?
Broadly, it is investigative practical work, worked from a brief issued by the State Examinations Commission. In Biology the component is called the Biology in Practice Investigation and carries forty per cent, with the written paper at sixty, which gives a good sense of the model the sciences follow.
What is being assessed is scientific judgement. Students plan and carry out practical work, record what happened honestly, and then account for it, including for the things that did not behave as expected.
That is the part students find genuinely strange. Five years of school science has trained them to produce the expected result.
Who marks it?
The State Examinations Commission, externally. Citizens Information, updated on 14 September 2026, confirms these components are marked by the Commission and not by the student’s own class teacher. Teacher based assessment was in the original design and was dropped in September 2023, with the then Minister Norma Foley citing the growth of generative artificial intelligence, as the Irish Examiner reported.
The practical consequence is one I labour in every school I visit. The teacher is a coach with no stake in the mark, so a student loses nothing by admitting confusion. I have watched too many able students stay silent in a lab because they thought asking would count against them.
What can we rely on if there are no past papers?
Sample papers, which arrived unusually early. The State Examinations Commission published sample examination papers for the nine first group subjects in April 2025, around eighteen months earlier than is normal for a new course, and those are the closest thing to a past paper that exists for Leaving Cert Chemistry or Physics.
Those are the closest thing to a past paper that exists, and they should be used carefully. A student who does a sample paper in September has nothing left to practise on in May.
I would do one now, one at Christmas, and one in the spring, under timed conditions each time.
How should a student split their time between coursework and revision?
Front load the coursework, then switch hard into examination preparation. The Irish Times reported in September 2025 that these projects are expected to take in the region of twenty hours, with completion expected before a submission date the State Examinations Commission prescribes. Twenty hours is manageable if it is spread, and brutal if it lands in one fortnight.
The gear change afterwards is the bit families underestimate. Months of coursework habits, which reward slow careful drafting, do not prepare anyone for answering four questions in three hours.
Put a date in the calendar for the switch. I build that changeover into the seminars deliberately, because without a date the coursework habits drift right through to June.
What is the best way to revise science for the written paper?
Retrieval, and not review. Roediger and Karpicke, in Psychological Science in 2006, found that a week after studying, students who had tested themselves recalled fifty six per cent of material against forty two per cent for those who reread it. At a five minute delay rereading actually won, which is exactly why students trust it.
For Chemistry and Physics that means closing the book and writing out a derivation, a mechanism or an experimental method from memory, then checking it. Reading a worked example feels like studying and produces very little.
Rowland’s meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin in 2014 found the benefit of self testing rose sharply when students checked their answers afterwards. Checking is the step that gets skipped.
Is Physics and Chemistry the same as the combined subject?
No, and the naming is unfortunate. Physics and Chemistry is a separate combined subject, and it appears in the published plan for the third group of redeveloped subjects to be first taught from September 2027. Physics on its own and Chemistry on its own changed in September 2025.
If your child takes the combined subject, they are on the existing course for now. This is the sort of detail worth confirming with the school in one sentence.
Should we get grinds to cover the uncertainty?
It is the instinct I hear most in an uncertain year, and the evidence is lukewarm. ESRI research reported by the Irish Times in September 2024 found around fifty five per cent of Leaving Certificate students take grinds. McCoy and Byrne, in ESRI research published in 2022, found that shadow education produces no performance advantage on average in the Leaving Certificate, with some benefit for lower achieving students only.
What a grind cannot do is tell you what is on a paper nobody has sat. What helps more, in my experience, is a student who does sample papers under a clock and reviews them properly afterwards.
The Questions That Come Up Every Year About the New Science Courses
My daughter’s teacher seems unsure about the new course. Should I be worried?
It is a reasonable thing for a teacher to admit in the first year of a new specification, and I would take honesty as a good sign. Ask what the school’s internal deadlines are and which sample materials they are using. That tells you more than confidence does.
Are old past papers useless now?
Not useless, but limited. Much of the underlying science carries over and old questions are fine for practising content. Do not use them as a guide to the structure of the new written paper, because the assessment has changed and the sample papers are the better model.
Can my son still get a H1 in the first year of a new course?
Yes. His paper is marked to the same marking scheme as every other student sitting it, and that scheme is built for the course he actually studied. Being first through a new course is uncomfortable. It is not a disadvantage in the marking.
How do I find out the exact coursework weighting?
Ask the subject teacher, or look up the subject specification on Curriculum Online, which is the NCCA’s own publication site. Between those two you will get the real figure, and the weighting differs between subjects.
When exactly is the project due?
Schools work to a submission date set by the State Examinations Commission, falling during sixth year. The school’s own internal deadline will be earlier than that, and it is the one worth having on the fridge.
Getting Somebody to Help This Year
Sixth year is short, and in a year where coursework and a written paper both fall due, the students who come out well are the ones who planned the calendar in September.
I work on this with students for a living. Study Skills Ireland is mine, I am Enda O’Doherty, and I am based in Waterford. Most of what is above is what I spend an hour on with fifth and sixth years in the student study skills seminar, and it lands better from someone who is neither their parent nor their teacher. The talk for parents is the same content pointed at the adults in the house, because a student going one way while home goes another is the commonest reason good advice fails. The slower option is private study coaching, one to one, for the student who needs the habit built into their week and not the idea explained again. The contact page comes straight to me, and a short description of the problem usually gets a more useful answer than a general enquiry.
