Students praised the ease of yesterday’s Leaving Cert maths papers amid warnings from teachers that the curriculum is being dumbed down.
Yesterday’s higher and ordinary level papers included two strands from the old curriculum and two Project Maths strands. Monday’s paper 2 is entirely drawn from the Project Maths syllabus. All Leaving Cert students will sit the brand new Project Maths course from next year.
The new course is designed to help students apply maths to real-life situations, but it has proven controversial among some teachers, who say that it does not pose enough of a challenge to particularly strong maths students.
Speaking to The Irish Times, three teachers from different schools said the higher level paper was much fairer than last year’s exam for pilot schools. Student reaction was also unusually positive for a higher level maths exam. The majority of online comments from students expressed surprise at how accessible most of the questions were.
Aidan Roantree, senior maths teacher at the Institute of Education, said that higher-level students will have entered the exam with apprehension and dread but will have been very relieved by what they saw. “All the questions in section A were fully anticipated and wouldn’t have posed any difficulty for students who were prepared. The questions in section B were similar to those posed in the sample paper provided during the year; this would have taken the sting out of them for students. Section C, meanwhile, was much easier than previously, with no challenging integration whatsoever.”
The last old syllabus paper 1 for Junior Cert was a good one from the students’ point of view,” said Eamonn Toland of TheMathsTutor.ie. “The question on complex numbers was much easier than the corresponding question from the official sample paper – clearly the SEC was listening to all the complaints about that question from the sample paper.”
However, he said that a question on carbon dating may have been a little unfair to some students who don’t have a grounding in physics.
Elaine Devlin, ASTI subject representative and a teacher at De la Salle College, Dundalk, also said students were happy with the paper. “Some of the questions were challenging, but not unfair at all. A question on financial maths, as part of the new syllabus, carried a relatively low amount of marks, which was welcomed.”
The ordinary level paper was well received, said Mr Toland. “Anyone who had thoroughly studied and understood the questions on the official sample paper would be well prepared for this, although question 6, on arithmetic sequences, was a bit tricky and might have caught some students out.”
A total of 49,979 students sat this year’s Leaving Cert maths exam. A further 1,970 students, across 24 pilot schools, sat a separate maths exam under the new Project Maths syllabus.
The numbers taking higher level maths have risen by 50 per cent since the introduction of bonus CAO points for maths in 2011. This is expected to significantly increase the CAO points requirements, particularly for science, engineering, and technology courses, which have grown in popularity since the downturn began.
