Leaving Cert: Wealth of topical issues in economics

The build-up to Ireland’s clash with Italy began early for some ordinary-level Leaving Certificate economics students.

The Euro 2016 tournament was mentioned in one of their questions yesterday morning.

Bairbre Kennedy, a spokeswoman on the subject for the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) said there were far more current economic issues on the ordinary-level paper than the number which higher-level students got a chance to deal with.

That higher-level exam featured many new types of questions and was very challenging, Ms Kennedy believed.

She said students might have been surprised to find a short question specifically about youth unemployment, although the broader topic was one they would have prepared for. The flooding crisis was also a new kind of topic, introduced in the context of potential effects of government levies on insurance.

This, Ms Kennedy said, was about the only recent Irish issue which appeared on the paper that also required a strong level of higher-order thinking in places. For example, a question about how the effects of cleaning an oil spill might affect gross domestic product required a very thorough knowledge of national income theory.

A question about inequality may have left students uncertain if they could discuss social inequality, or if it had to be specific to economic issues like rich-poor or urban-rural divides.

For ordinary-level students — around one in 10 of almost 6,000 taking the subject — there was a wealth of topical issues on the exam. They included a reference to Irish fans at Euro 2016 in France as an example of an invisible import, and a question about causes of homelessness and economic measures to reduce it.

Ms Kennedy said the Web Summit technology conference in Dublin was the basis of a question about the economic benefits of hosting big events, and another question around the consumption and advertising of alcohol was another topic which has been in the media regularly.

For around 5,500 students doing Leaving Certificate design, the higher-level design and communication graphics (DCG) exam was fair but demanding.

This was the opinion of ASTI subject spokesman Michael Horan, who said questions in the second and third sections were well structured, each progressing from basic knowledge and concepts to more challenging final parts.

He said the short questions should have pleased students, with the level of choice and the appropriate level at which they were pitched.

The surface development of a curved metal shade for traffic lights was one topic, as well as the hyperbolic curves near the top of a sharpened pencil. Objects which higher-level students were asked to construct drawings around included a sculpture celebrating Brendan the Navigator’s seafaring adventures, an architectural model of a hotel, and the intersecting triangular glass surfaces of a McDonald’s restaurant.

Mr Horan said ordinary-level students were pleased with their exam, requiring them to construct designs for a USB memory key, a cooker hood, and a deck chair in the form of a hyperbolic paraboloid.