Leaving Cert agricultural science: Some curveballs but lots of choice

The Leaving Cert agricultural science paper included some “curveballs” for students but was balanced with plenty of choice, say teachers.

Catriona Hendry, agricultural science teacher at The Institute of Education, said questions in the exam have often looked harder than they are.

“That trend continued here – this time with a few novel twists that students will not have anticipated,” she says.

“There were some notable omissions – no diagrams (outside of experiments) and no long question on the nitty gritty of specific crops. But what will have most likely set some off-balance is the format of some questions,” Ms Hendry said.

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Similarly, Peter Keaney, ASTI subject representative and teacher at Wilson’s Hospital School in Westmeath, said the higher level paper had a “fair hearing to all areas of the course”.

He felt there were no curveballs thrown at students in the short questions, and acknowledged questions on modern technologies in question three (a) and (b) and the introduction of the Beef Welfare Scheme for 2024 in question five was a nice touch, calling it an “up to date paper”.

Short questions

The short questions had lots of viable choices, so students could navigate through the options to success, she said.

“Some were straightforward in that you either knew it or you didn’t, with little room for in the moment extrapolation or reasoning, eg the question on Blackleg and questions six on identifying farming implements, the latter of which would greatly favour those with practical experience,” she said.

“Of this section, question eight and question 12 stand out as deviations from the standards of previous years, she said.

Question eight was a “nice question” on the nitrogen cycle but rather than a series of incremental questions allowing students to chip away at the topic, candidates were presented with a full-page answer box.

“This is much more typical for a long question, and some will be very surprised to see it in this section,” she said.

“Empty space means that answers have a greater risk of missing the mark, and students will likely feel unsure about how much they should have written.”

Question 12 was “normal” in its structure but “odd” in the span of the material examined, Ms Hendry said.

“Students will have been accustomed to short questions sticking to a topic each, but question 12 drew from all the corners of the course,” she said.

In the long questions students would have turned the page and been greeted by a very tricky animal enterprise question on beef and dairy.

“Reproductive efficiency, replacements rates and “milk record” may all have been positioned just outside of students’ comfort zones, and I suspect many will quickly scan the page and decline to tackle this question,” she said.

“But that is one of the key approaches for success in Ag. Science: keep moving, don’t get stuck.”

Question 14 was a welcome return of SPA (Specified Practical Activities) that were underrepresented last year, Ms Hendry said.

“This examined their grasp of a soil experiment plucked right from the course; so many will be happy with that,” she said.

Question 15 on genetics was another “full box” question followed by a rather tough plant identification question, she said.

Ms Hendry described question 16 as an “old friend/enemy”: food conversion ratios.

“While it is not always popular, it will be familiar to those who have worked through past papers,” she said. “The later parts of this question had a novel and contemporary twist as students were asked to critically assess an AI summary.”

Ms Hendry said this was an “interesting way to apply the strength of their studies in the context of increasingly popular digital tools”.

“A fun synthesis of a cautionary tale and academic assessment,” she added.

The final question on the paper was a graphing question that was reminiscent of aspects of students’ projects but had never been asked in this way before.

“Extrapolating or extending graphs are familiar territory, but this was graphing from scratch. A very approachable task but not one that fell within anyone’s expectations for the exam,” Ms Hendry said.

Overall, she said this was a “good exam and nearly every curveball is balanced with something nicely workable”.