Standard of picture leads discussion on prickly issue

AN OVERHEAD photo of a thistle presented itself as a thorny issue in yesterday’s agricultural science higher paper.

“Most students should have copped it but it could have been mistaken for a fern,” said Mullingar teacher Peter Keaney. “The photo, generally, was poor and misleading as it did not show the depth of the plant.”

Padraic Brennan from the Vocational School in Roscommon said the photographs used in papers, for the first time, were different from those in textbooks. “They could have been off-putting,” he said.