'It was exactly as they would have expected'

LEAVING CERT MATHS ORDINARY LEVEL PAPER 2:"A REASONABLE test of the old syllabus" was the verdict on the ordinary-level Leaving Cert maths Paper 2 taken by more than 35,000 students across the State yesterday morning.

“It was exactly as they would have expected,” said Brigid Cleary of St Flannan’s College in Ennis. Teachers said that questions on trigonometry, statistics and probability were well received and that many would have breathed a sigh of relief on opening the paper.

“Question 1 [area and volume] was phrased very simply,” said Bríd Griffin of the Carlow Institute of Education. Ms Griffin said that, overall, parts A and B of the ordinary-level paper were quite straightforward but that part C would have challenged most.

“It is parts A and B that the less mathematically-minded students would be looking out for,” she said. “The questions have to get a bit more difficult to challenge the stronger students.”

Jean Kelly of the Institute of Education said the paper included some “tricky elements” that would have challenged even the most competent student but that most “left the exam hall happy”.

“The paper was a reasonable test of the old syllabus,” she said.

Ms Kelly said the popular trigonometry question may have caused some discomfort among candidates. “The examiner used a related triangle in the diagram, with sides in a different ratio.”

As with the higher-level paper, teachers said students who studied probability would have been happy with the question they were set.

“Question 6 [probability] and question 7 [statistics] would be areas where students would be looking to get good marks,” Ms Griffin said.

A total of 24 schools sat a fully revised Project Maths Paper 2 yesterday. John Brennan of the Ballinteer Institute in Dublin said the majority of questions were very short and that “any half-handy ordinary-level student would have had no problem with them”.

He said section B may have posed problems for some who might have struggled to cope with the length of some of the problems.

“The layout was a problem,” he said. “They would have had to keep turning back pages. The first part of one question was on page 10 and the last was on page 13.”