Teachers dismayed by maths paper

THOSE who set the second paper for Leaving Cert ordinary level maths students can expect some flak from teachers around the country.

They were already quite angered about the tough Paper I, sat by their pupils last Thursday morning.

But a long exam with quite difficult questions made some teachers furious, and upset the candidates, judging by phone calls to this office yesterday.

Phyllis Flaherty, an ASTI maths spokesperson, said it was a very difficult paper, and most of the final parts of questions were beyond the standard of ordinary level students.

"Anyone who was looking for an A in maths will find it very difficult. The questions were far too long and many students would have ran out of time," she said.

TUI maths spokesperson Andy Carolan also thought the paper was very lengthy and much harder than last year for the average student.

It will be interesting to see if the State Examinations Commission will take these kind of views into account when setting out the correction criteria, particularly given the high failure rate at this level last year.

There were no major qualms about the higher level paper, although ASTI maths spokesperson Eileen Scanlon said it was slightly more difficult than might have been expected.

The foundation paper didn't look as if it should have caused any major problems, while both Junior Cert maths papers had no obvious stumbling points.

For those taking geography almost 30,000 for Leaving Cert and 54,000 Junior Cert students it was quite a long day.

Many of those who took the higher level Junior Cert paper could well be aggrieved at the length of it 23 pages.

But more disturbing was the poor quality of many of the diagrams, including an off-putting pie-chart showing a larger-than-half portion deemed to represent 50%.

ASTI subject spokesperson James Stauntonalso took issue with an ordinary level question referring to a pink shaded area on what was practically a black and white map.