Calculator confusion in exam

CONFUSION over the use of calculators may have caused stress at some exam centres yesterday.

Strict rules from the State Examinations Commission allow the use of calculators but not models which are programmable, or can carry out certain functions like graph plotting or matrix calculations.

Some students may have understood that a new model of Casio calculator was allowed and brought them into the Leaving Certificate maths paper yesterday. But others, who contacted the Irish Examiner from the north-west at lunchtime, had left them at home after hearing on a radio programme that they were not allowed.