Exams caught many students off-guard

This year's State exam papers have been exacting, confusing and at times obscure, writes Emmet Oliver, Education Correspondent

Cruelty to tadpoles, indecipherable French accents, the non-appearance of Seamus Heaney, the musical disharmony of S Club 7 and three weeks of World Cup hysteria.

These were just some of the things the class of 2002 had to contend with during this year's exam season, which ended yesterday.

As the 16 lonely souls who did Leaving Cert Greek trailed away from the exam hall at 5 p.m., the parents of were probably more relieved the whole experience was over than their teenage sons or daughters.

Many of the 56,000 students who took the Leaving Cert this year will now take up summer jobs or enjoy a fortnight basking by the pool in Spain or Portugal. However, their parents will remain at home, possibly worrying about the kind of results which are going to be issued on August 14th.

Their worry is partially understandable. This year's papers, as judged by students and teachers, have been exacting, confusing and at times obscure. It is not that Department of Education examiners included items which were not on the syllabus, more that they selected topics from the more peripheral parts of the various courses and caught a lot of students off-guard.

The now notorious frog/tadpole question on the higher level biology paper drew an angry student reaction, not because it was particularly difficult, but because it had not been asked in more than 30 years.

The examiners were perfectly entitled to select such an experiment - although many teachers believed the taking of tadpoles or frogs for experiments was illegal - but one wonders what was the point of the exercise?

Most schools do not perform the experiment, so how were students expected to learn about it if their own teachers no longer believed it was worth doing?

The reason there is often a gap between what is on the papers and what students are learning in the classroom often comes down to who sets the paper.

Some of those who set exam papers are deeply attuned to what is being taught in the classroom. However, others are somewhat aloof and construct a paper which, while it may be sound academic, is seriously out of kilter with what students actually know.

The other issue which drew parental and student anger this year was the French aural tape. Leaving Cert French is now taken by more than 30,000 students (the fourth most popular subject) and a strong performance in this subject is required by many students so they can make up points totals needed for third level.

However, from the reactions of students and teachers, the quality and pace of this year's tape was poor. The acoustics in many exam halls were reported to be below standard and this is not the first year that problem has arisen.

Considering the tape is prepared well in advance of the exam, surely the Department can have it checked out for pace and quality before it goes into final production? Also, as some teachers have suggested, could CDs not be used instead?

However, despite all these shortcomings in the exam process, parents and students can take some comfort from the immutable nature of the Leaving and Junior Cert exams.

Despite hissing tapes, unexpected poets and daft biology questions, the results in August are highly unlikely to be much different from previous years. The way exams are marked in the Republic means the traditional curved pattern will emerge again.

This curve, which starts flat at the fail and pass grades, rises in the middle for C and B grades and then flattens out again for A grades. By checking Department of Education statistics, one sees this familiar curve repeated, so there is little change year on year, regardless of how difficult the papers were.

So biology results are unlikely to be down markedly, French results should remain solid, although English examiners are likely to be as stingey as ever. This year's students too will probably get almost as many honours as last year's bunch.

Those controversial questions are likely to be flagged at the marking conference in Athlone, attended by the thousands of teachers marking this year's exams.

They will be told to adjust their marking so that these questions are marked a little easier than originally intended.

This should boost the predictably poor performance by most students on those questions. The other thing to remember is that if you found this year's papers hard, the student beside you probably felt the same, if not worse.