Junior Cycle geography: Teachers criticise lack of choice

Teachers have criticised the State Examinations Commission’s Junior Cycle geography paper for the lack of choice in questions and the absence of a breakdown in marks awarded per question.

The response echoes widespread criticism of yesterday’s Junior Cycle history paper.

This is the first year that students have sat a “common level” exam paper for most subjects, except Irish, English and maths which have retained the system of ordinary and higher level papers.

Students sitting the geography paper were advised that not all questions carried equal marks, but were not told how many marks each question did carry.

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Edmund Hussey, ASTI subject representative and a teacher at CBC in Cork, said that the absence of a marking scheme left students unclear how much time to spend on each question.

“The space provided in the answer book is intended to give candidates an idea of how much to write, which is fine for the more academically able candidate, but others may struggle,” he said.

“In addition, there was no choice on any of the nine questions, with students having to answer everything.”

Luke Saunders, co-founder of Studyclix.ie and a geography teacher, said that there was a mismatch between the approach taken in geography at junior and senior cycle

“Adjustments were made to the Leaving Cert paper in light of the disruption to teaching and learning as a result of Covid-19, so that students had a huge choice of questions to pick from.

“Yet, at junior level students had no choice whatsoever and were required to answer all nine questions on the paper. I think it would have been a fairer approach to offer at least some choice to junior students also as I am sure there are students out there who through Covid-enforced disruptions may not  have finished some parts of the course.”

Mr Hussey also had wider criticisms of the paper.

“Teachers also feel that we spent quite a lot of the 28 learning outcomes - but how many were examined on the paper?,” he said. “This paper is supposed to prepare students for Leaving Cert geography, but I don’t think it is, and students will enter senior cycle with a deficit in the skills they need.”

Mr Hussey said that there were insufficient questions on sustainability and climate action which, he said, was only briefly touched on in one question, while the maps that accompanied question five were quite dark and some of the landscape features were hard to see.

The response was not entirely negative, however: Mr Saunders said the first ever common-level geography paper was quite standard and covered a wide range of topics on the course.

“I liked that the paper drew on a student’s ability to make a reasoned argument, such as in question six where they had to give an argument for and against the development of a wind farm,” Mr Saunders said.

Try this one at home:

Junior Cycle geography, common level

Education for young people can impact on gender equality and life expectancy. Explain how providing young people with education can have an impact on either gender equality or life expectancy.