Leaving Cert students fairly pleased with first foray

Leaving Certificate students at St Angela’s College in Cork City were fairly pleased with how they fared in the first papers.

Thu, 05 Jun, 2014 - 01:00

Niall Murray, Education Correspondent

With the second paper in English more of a concern, most felt there was little enough preparation to be done for Paper 1, which they began at 9.30am. By the time they emerged soon after midday, the mood was quite positive.

“It wasn’t what I was expecting, there was a comprehension piece on Seamus Heaney so I’m worried he won’t come up in Paper 2 now,” said Lorna Allen from Douglas.

“I answered on the first comprehension piece instead. For the essay, I went with the descriptive essay about something exotic, but I went with an idea and changed my mind halfway through,” she said.

Unlike many students who have to wait until mid-June to finish, her Leaving Certificate finishes in a week’s time, so she is glad to have things under way.

There was also relief to have things started for her classmate Alice Smith from Blackrock, who had an idea that suited a short story title in which a ghostly presence had to play a significant part.

“It wasn’t too bad a paper, although you can’t really tell because you can’t prepare much for Paper 1,” she said.

“I’m not finished until chemistry on Tuesday week, it’s grand to have them spread out,” said Alice, who has listed a degree in medicine as first choice on her college application.

For Nessa Ruane from Turner’s Cross, psychology is her top choice, and she too was relieved to be under way. She avoided the Heaney passage on the higher level paper, but picked the question in which students had to write a letter.

“It was a letter you had to send to a famous person, asking them to bring an object from their childhood to your school exhibition, and I wrote to David Bowie,” she said.

“I was surprisingly calm going in this morning. I wrote a personal essay about uncertainty and I had a bit of difficulty with timing. I got it finished, it just wasn’t a long as I’d have hoped,” said Nessa.

Junior Certificate students at St Angela’s finished a little earlier and Clodagh Ryan from Montenotte said she was a bit nervous in advance. She picked an essay for which they were given the opening line: “Everything had changed in 90 minutes…”

“I wrote it about two friends, and one realised she didn’t like her friend any more,” said Clodagh.

Abigale Owens from Douglas chose the same essay title and wrote about somebody winning a competition.

“The comprehension was okay, but you had to answer three questions, and they were only worth 10 marks each,” she said.

For Louise Dillon, the subject of the comprehension passage was a help, as it was all about the BBC TV series, Sherlock Holmes.

“I thought it was okay, I like watching Sherlock Holmes anyway, and it was about the writer’s love affair with the show.”

While some of her classmates are most looking forward to their music exam, which is not for almost another fortnight, Louise expects to do best in maths and science.

Surprise as Heaney makes an early appearance

The appearance of Seamus Heaney in a comprehension passage may have set some Leaving Certificate students’ hearts thumping, but the first exams brought no major shocks.

It was one of the main talking points after the nerves had dissipated and around 118,000 Junior and Leaving Certificate students emerged from their first papers at almost 5,000 exam centres yesterday.

The late Nobel laureate featured in one of three passages at Leaving Certificate higher-level English which Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) subject spokesman Fintan O’Mahony said were all fine.

Although he believes most students will have been preparing for Heaney for this afternoon’s second Leaving Certificate papers, he said the passage and related questions would not have disadvantaged any student who was not strongly familiar with his poetry.

“It shows the exam-setters want to get away from the idea of people predicting papers, and nobody would have predicted him coming up,” he said. He felt it was an interesting passage and welcomed how students were asked for personal responses to the piece, which was written by Heaney for the History Ireland journal.

He was pleased with the composition questions, particularly a short story about a ghostly presence and a magazine article on Irish people’s obsession with the weather. He felt both would have suited strong writers and, while all choices were challenging, none should have been too scary for students at any level.

Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) English spokes- man Ollie Power felt the first higher-level exam was pretty standard, although he believed the second comprehension passage was quite difficult. He referenced the use of language such as ‘repository of personal emotion’ and a writer constructing the emotional architecture of his characters, which he said was beyond the reading ability of many students. He also thought the second sections of the comprehension questions were straightforward.

While the composition choices were mostly along standard lines, he thought a speech about young people’s political engagement was difficult for teenagers.

The Leaving Certificate ordinary-level paper featured passages from the biographies of Roy Keane and Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education campaigner, which Mr O’Mahony considered relevant for students.

He said the composition choices at ordinary level were moving in the right direction, as students might not have been able to write a prepared essay around many of the titles. One was a personal essay about how overcoming failure can make someone stronger, and he said most would have challenged students.

Mr Power considered the ordinary-level exam straightforward. He was also pleased with the passage about Roy Keane.

nLeaving Certificate home economics students had their exam in the afternoon and it was described by TUI subject spokeswoman Kate Hehir as fair, with a broad range of topics for well-prepared students to choose from.

She thought there was plenty of choice in the long questions, and noted a change to the first of them in which resource management was integrated with the usual topic of food and nutrition.

“Even though it was a change in style, it was quite topical because a lot of families shop in different stores now, making it very current. It was also quite answerable once students had read the data provided,” she said.

She found questions about kitchen appliances and a sociology question on the family all straightforward, and was glad there was a topical question on the choice between buying or renting houses.

ASTI home economics spokeswoman Joan Glasheen said there were no major stumbling blocks on the paper, with very concise short questions. While she considered the opening long question challenging, she too thought combining topics of healthy eating and household finances a good move. She was also pleased with a topical question about lifelong learning, but thought the length of some questions may have made finishing on time difficult for some students.

Ms Hehir said the ordinary-level paper was fair, with eight out of 12 short questions asking about food, and another topical question about home-buying, pollution and the environment.

The appearance on Leaving Certificate English higher level students’ first exam of Seamus Heaney — a favourite to appear in this afternoon’s Paper 2 — raised many eyebrows; and quite a few tweets. He was one of the 10 most-used words on Twitter globally by lunchtime.

@_EYE_LEAN_

Twitter: The one and only place for Leaving Cert postmortems and predictions

@Mad_Nutters

The heavens have opened to show how much I hated the essay choices in paper 1..Horrible paper.

@IsMiseMichael

Department of education trolling putting Heaney on paper 1

@AmandaDuggan16

Bawling that Heaney came up in a comprehension

@BurkeShan

Thought I got paper 2 today when I saw Heaney NO NO HEANEY

@niamhdaly96

This could mean Heaney definitely won’t come up tomorrow but equally it could mean that they’re just trying to throw us off the scent #uhoh