LEAVING CERT APPLIED MATHS and RELIGIOUS EDUCATION:AS LEAVING Cert 2010 drew to a close, the Applied Maths exam received a "thumbs up on both hands" from teachers yesterday.
Applied Maths is a minority subject at Leaving Cert level. An average of more than 1,400 students take the Leaving Cert paper each year, and the vast majority – all but 44 students this year – take the higher level paper.
“I was very impressed with the continuing clarity of the questions,” said ASTI representative Christy Maginn, a teacher in St Declan’s College, Cabra. “In the past there were problems with questions that were a bit vague in the exam, but that has all changed.”
Aidan Roantree, a maths teacher in the Institute of Education, said: “Although there were a couple of minor areas of the paper such as the circular motion question that provoked discussion, students thought that the paper was fair and contained few surprises.”
Maginn added: “The concept of an annulus in question eight may have been unfamiliar to students,” added Maginn.
“But the way the question was broken down would have gone some way towards assisting the students.” Diagrams that accompanied many of the questions drew praise from Maginn.
“They go a long way towards clarifying what is being asked in a question,” he said. “It gives students a great confidence when tackling the exam.
“The State Examinations Commission has done a great job in opening up the subject from the exam end of things,” he continued.
“The numbers studying it have remained pretty static despite that, though. Hopefully more exams like this will encourage more teachers and students to attempt the subject.”
In a bid to encourage more students to study Applied Maths, the Irish Applied Mathematics Teachers’ Association offers medals and bursaries (sponsored by Raymond Kearns, founder of the Institute of Education) to the three students who achieve top marks in the subject each year.
No problems were reported for the Religious Education exam. The subject is a relatively new one at Leaving Cert level, having been first examined in 2005. Just over 1,000 students sat it yesterday.
Twenty per cent of the marks in this subject are awarded for the student’s journal. The other 80 per cent was examined yesterday.
The paper included topics such as the philosophy of Aristotle, the search for the meaning of life, Christianity, world religions and issues of justice and peace.
Students thought the paper fair, although the question on Aristotle was deemed to be more difficult than expected.
The ordinary level paper drew no complaints, again posing questions on the meaning of life, as well as moral decision-making and the Irish experience of religion.