Students happy with fair paper

Leaving Cert technical drawing:The old technical drawing syllabus is examined for the penultimate time this week and yesterday's higher-lever paper 1 went down well with students and teachers.

"Most students were happy with the higher level paper which offered plenty of choice and a nice first question to settle students in," said Pat O'Dwyer, TUI subject convenor and technical drawing teacher at Pobalscoil Inbhearsceine.

"The questions have become increasingly student-friendly over the years and the move away from industrial-style topics has helped to attract new students to the subject," Mr O'Dwyer added.

Stumbling blocks cropped up in questions two and four, but, he said, they looked harder than they were.

John O'Sullivan of the ASTI agreed that yesterday's was a fair paper that tested the key aspects of the course.

"I had slight reservations about question three, as part B was harder than part C," he said. "Students could not answer C without completing B so that could have posed problems for some."

The ordinary level paper, taken by about one in three students, followed the usual lines and was nicely laid out, according to teachers.

The question on the prism, question 5, was regarded by some as tricky but otherwise the paper was well-received.

Technical drawing paper 2 takes place today.