EU crisis to fore in Leaving geography

It was a testing session for Leaving Cert geography students this morning, in a paper that demanded an explanation of the euro zone crisis, among other conundrums.

The higher paper also explored the greenhouse effect and the impact of multinational corporate strategy on national economies.

“This exam tested topics from all over the syllabus, which is the right approach,” said Asti subject convenor Jimmy Staunton. “The short questions were a little more involved than in the past, but that has been the trend of recent years and the students were prepared for it.”

Almost half of all Leaving Cert students took geography at higher or ordinary level today.

Michael Doran, geography teacher at the Institute of Education, also welcomed the comprehensive spread of the questions, but said that the paper had its fair share of twists and turns.

“Students found the regional geography section challenging, as the questions were more specific than in previous years. The elective section also saw the examiner depart from the usual treatment of regular topics, the question on European Union policy and its influence on regional development required very specific knowledge,” said Mr Doran.

The popular geo-ecology option also featured a slight departure from the norm.

“The examiner introduced a twist on the usual question of biomes - examining how three human activities impact on biomes,” said Mr Doran.

Students were asked a series of short questions on physical geography including volcanoes, plate tectonics, satellite reading and ordnance survey.

There were longer sections on trade and economics, the euro crisis, greenhouse gases and geographical history. There were also several map reading and graph analysis exercises.

Geography is one of the top elective subjects on the Leaving Certificate curriculum. More than 26,000 students were expected to sit the exam today. There is almost equal participation of male and female students in the subject.

A new geography syllabus was introduced in 2006.

Almost 4,000 students sat this morning’s geography exam at ordinary level. The exam went “as expected”.