Leaving Certificate home economics candidates were presented with a “challenging but fair” paper at higher level and a “student-friendly” offering at ordinary level, teachers have said.
Sinéad Sweeney, home economics teacher at Loreto Secondary School in Cork, said the higher-level paper covered a “wide range of topics”.
She said section A of the paper was “fully aligned with the syllabus”, section B had a “varied” level of difficulty that allowed top students to demonstrate their knowledge and section C was “very broad in nature and covered various topics”, Sweeney added.
The exam included topics such as housing development, changing shopping patterns, processed foods and protein bars. Sweeney said an area some students may have found difficult was question 3 of section B, which covered artificial sweeteners and processed foods.
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Overall, she said, students will be content with the paper.
Megan Friel, a teacher at Mercy College in Sligo, said the exam was “challenging but fair”.
Overall, she said, the paper struck a “good balance between testing students’ knowledge and allowing well-prepared candidates to demonstrate their understanding”.
Friel said the particular wording used for section B question 1 may have caused some uncertainty for students, but a corresponding chart was clear and “accessible”.
“While some questions were more specific than in previous years, the topics were relevant and predictable,” she added.
Alice Quinn, a teacher at The Institute of Education in Dublin, described it as a “predictably unpredictable paper that will leave some students with mixed emotions”.
Quinn said students who focused on studying the syllabus would have found the paper “very approachable” but those who tried to “streamline their work based on past papers” may have been disappointed to “find themselves pigeonholed”.
She said students would have been happy with sections A and C, but some may have stumbled over the new wording of questions in section B.
The ordinary-level paper used “student-friendly” language and, overall, had made the questions “accessible” to those who sat the exam, according to Friel.
The inclusion of “familiar topics” in section C’s core question and the familiar format of the nutritional chart question in section B would have brought students confidence, she said.
Sweeney agreed that students would have been happy to see inclusion of the topic of housing in section C, while one particular question in section B on the microwave may have tripped students up as it had not come up for some time.
“Overall, the exam featured familiar topics and clear wording, providing students with a valuable opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding,” Friel said.
Sweeney said the ordinary paper was a nice offering overall with “nothing that was too difficult or that would throw [the students] in any way”.
