Too many crops but few surprises

Close to 3,000 students taking Leaving Cert agricultural-science papers yesterday will have been relieved by papers which contained few surprises.

TUI subject representative, Mr PJ McGarry said question 1 (f) - which asked students about the expected yield per hectare of barley, oats, potatoes and sugar beet - was unfair. The syllabus states that students should cover one cereal crop and one root crop or potatoes. These means teachers would not have covered barley and oats or potatoes and sugar beet. Students had to answer six out of 10 parts in this question and this cut down their choice, Mr McGarry said.

The same problem recurred in question 5 (c) where students were asked to describe a lab test they had carried out to estimate the content of sugar in sugar beet.

The wording in question 2 (a) did not read well. The final two parts of question 7 were essentially the same question in a different guise, he noted. Overall, the paper was fine but it required a little rewording in parts, Mr McGarry said.

Mr Padraig Brennan, also a TUI subject representative, said the higher-level paper was "quite nice and quite fair compared to other years". It was along the expected lines but there were sections of questions - for instance, the photosynthesis question - which would have excluded some students because they asked for experiments which were not compulsory and not all teachers do.

The language was better than in the past and quite student-friendly. Students from sugar beet growing areas were at an advantage because it's an unknown crop in some parts of Ireland. The genetics question was quite difficult as it was more biological in emphasis, Mr Brennan said.

At ordinary level, the exam was fair and as expected. However, ordinary-level students may have experienced difficulties with the genetics question, according to Mr Brennan. Question 2 (b) was difficult as it asked students to determine the percentage of inorganic matter as opposed to more usual organic. Question 4 asked for three crops in the one question, which was unusual.

Mr McGarry said that the ordinary-level paper was not very much different from the higher level, though it was to be presumed that a greater depth of answer would be required at higher level.

Question 3 (b), which asked students about the oxygen cycle, was too difficult for ordinary-level students. Some of the phrasing was unnecessarily difficult, he added. For instance, "pre-" and "post-" were used instead of "before" and "after" while "nutrient elements" could have been replaced with the simpler "nutrients", Mr McGarry said.