Easy paper for ball kickers

THE students kicking a ball around in the yard of CUS College on Dublin’s Leeson Street were relaxed after completing what they regarded as fair papers.

Generally speaking, they felt the questions on the first Junior Certificate maths exams did not contain any nasty, unexpected surprises.

It appeared students who had done their groundwork over the year were reaping the reward for their efforts.

"Extremely easy," was Niall Murray's succinct reply to how he felt about the ordinary level paper.

"I didn't have any problems," he said.

Philip Matthews joined in: "Everything that I expected came up. It was a fair paper."

By contrast, Georgie Leech thought the higher level paper was very hard, especially questions five and six a view shared by some student colleagues doing the higher level paper.

However, Georgie hoped for the best and was optimistic that he had passed the first maths paper, with Paper II coming up on Monday morning.

Another CUS College student, Joe Mulville, agreed that the higher-level paper was difficult.

A number of students were baffled by question two, which dealt with prime factors, saying they did not know how to tackle it. However, Joe was generally optimistic about his performance.

"I'd say I did better than I did in my mock exams," he said.