Topical approach proves a fair challenge

LEAVING CERT GEOGRAPHY HIGHER AND ORDINARY LEVEL:ICELANDIC VOLCANOES, house prices and the decline of the Irish tourist industry all served to ensure that the Leaving Cert higher-level geography paper was topical and up to date.

It was just a shame that the current state of affairs painted such a gloomy picture in what was otherwise a fair, if occasionally challenging, paper, according to teachers.

Students seemed a bit more divided on the issue, with some on social media networks expressing delight and others dismay with yesterday morning’s exam.

“The phrasing of some of the questions at higher level was a bit different to what students might have expected so that might have thrown some of them,” said ASTI representative Jimmy Staunton, who teaches in Sligo Grammar School.

In the short questions section, students were asked about topics including glaciation, landforms and regional geography.

“It was very skills-based,” said Tom Hunt, Teachers’ Union of Ireland representative and teacher in Mullingar Community School. “But I thought the questions were fair. They were nice and topical too.”

Indeed, the section provided no escape from the recession, with a question asking students to interpret a rather depressing graph about monthly house prices in Ireland.

Examiners clearly made an effort to draw on recent events in the longer questions as well, with a question that drew heavily on the air disruptions caused by the Icelandic volcanic eruptions.

“That was a nice touch,” Mr Staunton said. “It was relating theory to practice, which was good.”

The elective sections posed few problems, although students of geo-ecology who took a gamble and studied soils alone would have been less happy with the questions than those who took a similar gamble on biomes, according to Mr Staunton.

Geography is one of the more popular subjects at Leaving Cert level, with almost 28,000 students sitting the paper yesterday. More than 23,000 of those sit the higherlevel paper. Only English and biology have more students sitting the higher-level papers this year.

The crop of geography students at higher and ordinary level had 20 per cent of the exam already completed thanks to a project that they finished and handed in earlier in the year.

Those who sat the paper at ordinary level were in for few surprises.

“I thought the exam required quite a lot of memory work,” said Dr Hunt. “That could have been tough for an ordinary-level student.”

Apart from that, however, teachers described the paper overall as “straightforward”.

TRY THIS AT HOME HIGHER LEVEL

Examine the way in which aid can have both positive and negative impacts on developing countries.

The developed world can often be accused of shortcomings in its view towards developing nations.

Examine this statement, referring to differing views of “development”.

Examine the importance of utilising natural resources in a sustainable way, with reference to examples that you have studied.