Well done to everyone who got their Junior Cycle results today. It's an important milestone for any student and marks the passing from Junior to Senior cycle. We now have very extensive middle bands of Merit and Achieved . The Higher Merits are more rare and the Distinction grade appears to hold the status of an endangered species. Meanwhile at Senior Cycle, we have a cohort of students achieving far more H1s and H2s. There's a stark contrast between the assessment at the Junior and Senior Cycles. It can be said that the Senior Cycle grades will fall as the mechanisms that inflate grades are eased and eventually removed. Are we journeying towards a similar descriptive band for Senior Cycle? Would the CAO be reduced to using lotteries as everyone journeys to the middle ground? I do wonder about the educational landscape that lies ahead. Graph from Physics Resource Bank