Leaving Cert Geography: ‘Nothing on emigration policy’

The higher level Leaving Certificate Geography paper was topical but tough, with students writing right up until the end.

Andrew Sheridan, a Leaving Cert student at Belvedere College Dublin, said the higher level Geography paper was “tough”.

“They combined lots of questions together. The short questions were very difficult. Instead of just giving a graph for example, they gave questions at the end so that you had a true or false answer, which they hadn’t ever done before.

“In the human section they combined some questions so you had to take some essays and then combine them with others to get your full 15 significant relevant points,” said Andrew.

Significant Relevant Points

On the Geography paper, students must put in 15 SRPs (Significant Relevant Points) which are sentences with two pieces of information or a statistic.

“There was nothing on emigration policy which we expected because of the refugee crisis. We thought there would be an essay on common emigration policy for the European Union which we had studied loads for, but it didn’t come up,” said Andrew.

“I didn’t have very much time with the paper, I was writing up until the very end. I will probably miss out on 10 marks on the end because I didn’t get a chance to finish it all,” said Andrew.

Belvedere student Sean McKeon said the paper was tough, and he was disappointed that material he had prepared to write on migration policy did not come up in a question.

“There was a section on the economic effects of Polish people coming to Ireland. There was a heavy emphasis on Europe; definitely more than there was on the mock. I didn’t get to write anything about migration policy, which I had studied a lot,” said Sean.

“You’re under a lot of pressure in Geography - once you see a topic you know about, you just have to start writing. It was a solid exam, we just got through it,” said Sean.

‘Everyone had bet on it’

“Migration policy not coming up on the geography was a bit like WB Yeats not coming up on the English paper. Everyone had bet on it and expected it, but it didn’t turn up,” a rueful Sean added.

Geography teacher and founder of Studyclix.ie Luke Saunders said: “Today’s higher geography paper was broadly in line with the types of questions asked in previous years.

“Any student who had practised previous papers would have found the paper very approachable. In both Junior and Leaving Cert papers, higher level students were asked to study a map of Westport and write on the potential for Tourism.

“This would have been very manageable for any student who was properly prepared for studying Ordnance Survey maps.”

Mr Saunders said the ordinary level paper “was very fair and would not have held any surprises for students who had looked at previous year’s papers”.