HOME ECONOMICS HIGHER LEVEL:THE APPLICATION of knowledge was a key feature in yesterday's Leaving Cert home economics higher level exam. "Students couldn't have learned this paper off by heart," said Sandra Cleary, home economics teacher with the Institute of Education.

While the new exam timetable, introduced this year, spelled a welcome break for the majority of students after English Paper I, it was back to the hall for another exam for more than 12,000 home economics students.

Those familiar with the issues of the day coped well with a "balanced and topical paper" according to ASTI subject representative Maura McCaul, a home economics teacher in the Loreto College on St Stephen's Green.

Short questions presented students with a diverse range of topics such as osteoporosis, the inner workings of microwave ovens and Irish housing policy, but there were no real surprises. The questions themselves were "very straightforward" according to Ms Cleary, a welcome change for a section that has traditionally presented difficulties for students.

Lipids were hotly tipped this year and were a welcome inclusion in the other compulsory section of the paper. Students who had studied that topic would have been "thrilled" according to Ms Cleary. "Normally students would be worried about answering that section, but it was straightforward from start to finish," Ms Cleary said.

Housing came up yet again on the paper, having been asked in four out of the five years since the new home economics course was introduced, Ms McCaul said.

Overall questions were very topical, featuring issues such as childcare, mortgages and the family. Some, such as question five in section two, drew heavily on the census. That question dealt with the decline of the traditional family. McCaul said it was a question that allowed students to demonstrate what they knew, although Ms Cleary believed it to be only suited to the "top higher level students".

"The two obligatory questions in the paper were actually grand," Ms Cleary said. "The middle four questions were challenging enough."

Section two was otherwise regarded as largely "straightforward" and the electives were uncontroversial.

The written exam is worth 80 per cent of the students' final home economics marks, with 20 per cent of the assessment having already been completed in the form of a journal. Still a female-dominated subject, only about 1,500 of the 12,000 students taking the subject were male.

The trend of testing students' application of knowledge appears to be here to stay. "You couldn't get a lot of the information out of a textbook," Ms Cleary said.

While students may not have been happy about coming in for another exam while their colleagues had the afternoon free, they were rewarded with a "well set and fair paper", Ms McCaul said.