Higher-level students may have been edified to find that black grouse is a lekking species. This information comes courtesy of an extract from the New Scientist included on their exam paper. It explains that males gather annually for courtship displays at traditional lek sites, where they jump up and down, and call frantically.
An unimpressed TUI subject representative, Mr Tim O'Meara, said this question was confusing and it was unnecessary to go outside an already broad syllabus. Mr Ray McGough, a teacher in Magh Ene College, Bundoran, agreed.
Mr O'Meara said, overall, both sections of the higher-level paper, the short and the long-answer sections, were challenging but the well-prepared student should have done well. In general, questions concentrated on one particular topic.
Mr McGough noted that there are over 200 experiments on the course and, increasingly, practicals are turning up on the paper. The experiment in question 15(b)(iii) asked students to describe an experiment to demonstrate the action of auxin in casuing the bending of plants in response to light. This was a difficult experiment and students were unlikely to have done it, he said.
ASTI subject representative Ms Paula Hewison said the scarcity of questions on human systems would have upset some candidates. Many of the questions spanned a number of different topics, for instance, question 11 took in 7 topics.
At ordinary level, the paper was student-friendly, said Mr O'Meara, who teaches in St Enda's Community School, Limerick. Questions were phrased in a straightforward manner.
Ms Hewison said the paper was very manageable, with lots of diagrams. The layout of the questions would have helped students formulate their answers.
Mr McGough said the paper was demanding for the level of student. In the short-answer section question 2(a), on classification, was a difficult topic but he welcomed the inclusion of reproduction in question 3. Some of the topics in the long-answer section were off-putting, he added. The first question, on the cell and mitosis was very long. The inclusion of fossils in question 10 might have thrown some students while the wording in question 14 was unnecessarily difficult.