Some students forced to count the minutes

The bete noir of many students, the maths exam, happily failed to live up to its reputation yesterday. The general reaction to the morning's papers was good, though higher-level students may have found themselves in a race against the clock.

Ms Eileen Scanlon, ASTI subject representative and a teacher at at Salerno Secondary School, Salthill, Galway, said she was "happy enough overall with both higher and ordinary papers".

Mr John Evans, TUI subject representative, said "students who studied and did the work and were well prepared would have found the papers to be fair and testing. They would have been kept busy for the full two-and-a-half hours."

He professed himself happy with the number of higher-level students who said they could attempt more than six questions. This showed the benefits of getting the long course finished. For higher-level students, the pressure of the exam was compounded by time pressure. He said to get access to A grades they would have needed to be able to deal with the final part of each question.

Mr Mark Slocum, maths teacher at CBS Youghal, Co Cork, agreed that some higher-level students may have had time difficulties.

Questions 6 and 8, the differentiation and integration questions, were straightforward. The final part of the two algebra questions (questions 1 and 2) and question 7 were tricky, he noted, while part (c) of question 3 may also have caused problems.

Ms Scanlon said that the higher-level paper was nicely laid out but there were no proofs of theorems, which might disappoint students who had put work into them.

Ordinary-level students at CBS Youghal were "happy enough even though certain questions may have appeared off-putting initially," said Mr Slocum. Question 1 was "very straightforward . . . Everybody expected foreign exchange to come up, because this is the last year before the introduction of the euro." (see sample question)

Question 3 contained five short parts. Some students mistakenly took (b)(iii) for a quadratic equation while part (c) differed from previous years, but students should have been able to handle it, Mr Slocum said.

Most students who attempted question 6 were unhappy, as it failed to deliver on the usual period and range question and there was no differentiation from first principles. It was the first time a straight line graph had come up on question 6, he noted; it previously featured only on the 1994 sample paper.

Ms Scanlon noted that the third part of the questions on the ordinary-level paper was difficult.

Mr Evans said the foundation-level paper was "particularly nice. It permitted the students to demonstrate what they knew. It was fair and testing."

Mr Slocum agreed, saying the paper should not have caused students many problems. The short questions were fine. The order was important in part (a) of question 2 and this type of question may confuse some foundation-level students. The size of the numbers involved in the ratio part of question 3 may also have caused some problems but overall, the paper was fair, he said.