Fair test for agricultural science students

ALMOST 6,000 Leaving Certificate students sat their agricultural science exams yesterday with Seamus Hynes, of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI), describing the paper as “fair but ... quite testing”.

He said the opening set of questions in the Higher Paper had more parts than usual and covered a very wide range of topics. Elsewhere, students were asked to differentiate between parasitic and deficiency diseases, which was more than might normally be expected on an exam, but the experiment questions were fine.

Mr Hynes said ordinary level candidates were set an exam which was student-friendly, with a good mix of diagrams and photographs, although a long genetics question would have tested a lot of students.