How to Study With Leaving Cert Past Papers
Where the official Leaving Cert past papers and marking schemes are published, how to find a specific paper, and what to do with one once you have it.
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ExamAI Team 
A past paper has the same format and the same marking scheme as the exam you sit in June. Working through one measures what you can do under the conditions that count. This post covers where the official papers are, how to find a specific one, and what to do with a paper once you have it.
The papers are free and official
The State Examinations Commission sets and marks the state exams, and publishes every past paper on its own site. It also publishes the marking scheme for each paper, the document that states how marks are awarded question by question.
Both are free. A past paper pack sold in a shop is a reprint of a PDF the SEC gives away.
Why a specific paper is hard to find
The SEC keeps its back catalogue behind a search form. There are no pages to browse and no addresses to bookmark, so every paper costs another pass through the dropdowns.
The filenames give you no shortcut. The 2025 Higher Level maths marking scheme is LC003ALP000EV.pdf, where LC003 is the SEC's code for maths and A marks the level. You cannot construct these from a subject and a year. They differ in ways nothing warns you about, including capital letter O against digit zero, .pdf against .PDF, and paper identifiers that change between years.
One search box for every paper
Our past paper finder does that lookup for you. Type the subject, the year and the level on one line, in any order, and it resolves them to the paper.
maths 2025 hl lcreturns the 2025 Leaving Cert Higher Level maths papersbiology 2019 msreturns the Leaving Cert Biology marking scheme for 2019junior cert business studies 2024returns that year's Junior Cert Business Studies paper
Short forms resolve too. Use bio, chem or geog for the subject, hl, ol and fl for Higher, Ordinary and Foundation Level, and ms for a marking scheme. You do not need the SEC subject codes.
The finder covers 2007 to 2025 across the main Leaving Cert and Junior Cert subjects. Papers are listed at Higher, Ordinary, Foundation and Common Level, with the marking scheme beside each one. It hosts no PDFs itself. Every result links to the file on examinations.ie, and every link was checked to serve before release.
Each subject also has a page you can browse and bookmark. Leaving Cert maths papers lists every year and level, and each year has its own page, such as Leaving Cert Biology 2025.
Junior Cert 2020 and 2021
The finder returns no Junior Cert papers for 2020 or 2021. The normal Junior Cycle examinations were cancelled in both years because of Covid. In 2020 the June exams were replaced by school-based exams and assessments held early in the next school year (gov.ie). A Government decision of 17 February 2021 cancelled the process again the following year (Minister for Education, 31 March 2021). Separate sittings ran for early school leavers and adult learners in both years, so a small number of candidates did sit Junior Cycle papers.
The Leaving Cert ran differently. Calculated grades replaced the June 2020 exams, but a written sitting went ahead in November and December 2020 (gov.ie), and the SEC published those papers. Leaving Cert 2020 is therefore in the finder.
Working through a paper
Sit at least one paper under exam conditions. Closed book, with a timer set to the real time allowance for that paper. Working with your notes open measures whether you can look something up, and the June exam does not test that.
Mark it yourself. Open the marking scheme once you have finished, and go through your answers against it question by question. The scheme states what earns each mark, which is often a named term, a labelled diagram or a stated unit.
Record what cost you marks. "Forgot units twice, no conclusion in Q4, ran out of time on the last long question" is a list you can work from. A total mark tells you where you stand without telling you what to change.
Take one topic across several years. After a couple of full papers, pick a single topic and answer that question from several years in sequence. You see how the wording varies, and later attempts take less time than the first. Many of the Leaving Cert subject pages group past questions by topic, so you can do this without opening one paper at a time.
Start in 5th year. A question you cannot yet answer is more useful to find in 5th year than in the spring of 6th, because you still have time to act on it. The same applies while you are choosing subjects, where one real paper shows you more about a subject than a course description does.
FAQ
Are Leaving Cert past papers free? Yes. The State Examinations Commission publishes every paper and every marking scheme free.
How far back do the papers go? The finder covers 2007 to 2025 for both the Leaving Cert and the Junior Cert.
Where do I get the marking schemes?
They sit beside each paper in the finder. Add ms to your search, as in biology 2019 ms, or open the subject's year page and use the marking scheme link there.
Why are there no Junior Cert papers for 2020 and 2021? The normal Junior Cycle examinations were cancelled in both years because of Covid and replaced with school-based assessment, so no mainstream papers were set. Junior Cycle exams returned in 2022.
How many past papers should I do? There is no established number. A paper you sit and never mark gives you no information about what to change, so plan to mark each one you attempt.
Open the past paper finder to get a paper and its marking scheme together.