Education

Junior Cycle business: Teachers welcome paper but ‘working from home’ question proves tricky

New syllabus and exam format an improvement, says one teacher

Junior Cycle students sat the business studies exam on Monday afternoon. File photograph: Bryan O'Brien

Peter McGuire
Mon Jun 13 2022 - 18:07

Teachers have mostly welcomed this year’s common level junior cycle business paper, with one saying that the new syllabus and exam format is an improvement.

Ruairí Farrell, TUI subject representative and teacher at Greystones Community College in Co Wicklow, said there was a “lovely” start to the paper with an accessible question on household expenditure.

“This is one of the first topics taught at the start of the three-year junior cycle in most classrooms throughout the country and as a result students would be very familiar with it,” he said.

“Topical areas featured strongly on the examination paper — such as benefits of EU membership, shopping locally, carbon tax, and sustainability and grants from SEAI (Sustainable Energy Authority Of Ireland). These topics are cross curricular, so students may be familiar with them from studying their geography, home economics and CSPE courses.”

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Joan O’Brien, ASTI subject representative for business, said all the short questions were very reasonable and the paper was doable.

Although there was no choice on this year’s paper, Ms O’Brien said that this can be a positive as students don’t have to spend too much time deciding on which questions to do.

“If there is something that you’re not sure of, your brain can be working on it in the background and you can come back to it,” she said.

“The layout on the paper has much improved and the State Examinations Commission is to be commended for making it a lot cleaner.”

Topics on the paper included industrial disputes, consumer protection, the European Union and, as expected, bookkeeping and trial balances.

One question, on working from home, may have posed a challenge, both teachers said.

“The details of working from home have not themselves been fully worked out, and it seems very fast to put this on the paper,” said O’Brien.

“Even employers would have to think about this; it may have been better for this to be on next year’s exam.”

Mr Farrell agreed that this question was a challenge.

“It needed careful consideration by the students to correctly interpret,” he said. “Students needed to pause, reflect and reread the question to interpret correctly.”

Try this one at home:

From Junior Cycle business, common level

Q1 8 B (iii) Kevin works from home; identify two responsibilities he has to his employer.

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