`Excellent' questions focus on the global wealth divide

THIS year's Leaving Cert geography papers will have given students reason to be optimistic following testing maths papers earlier…

THIS year's Leaving Cert geography papers will have given students reason to be optimistic following testing maths papers earlier in the day.

A wide ranging and well received higher level paper included questions on the demise of minority languages and population concerns in the developing world, while ordinary level students tackled questions on the global wealth divide between north and south and conflicts of race and religion around the world.

Joke Whyte, ASTI subject representative and a teacher in St Colman's College, Fermoy, Co Cork, described the higher level paper as "well balanced, with enough choices to allow the student who had worked to do very well".

Mr David Wright, a teacher in the High School in Rathgar, Dublin, said it was a "straightforward paper this year. The questions were testing but there were no trick questions or anything of that kind."

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In question 2, Mr Whyte said the emphasis on the processes of erosion and deposition was good to see, as was the connection between human activity and the landscape the question on plate tectonics was straightforward and should not have posed a problem for candidates.

Question 3(a) involved the use of both a coloured aerial photograph of Kilkenny city centre and an Ordnance Survey map to analyse and discuss motor traffic management, the use and maintenance of green belts and the range of services offered by Kilkenny. Mr Whyte said the interplay between the Ordnance Survey map and the photo was to be welcomed and that "both complemented each other in the interpretation of our surroundings".

Mr Wright also welcomed the use of the new 150,000 Ordnance Survey map, describing it as a "great advantage to the students" since it was much easier to read and understand.

On the other hand, Mr Wright suggested that the aerial photo question was very demanding for students and the section on motor traffic might have caught some of them by surprise.

"If they sat down and thought about it it's not that hard," he said. "I wouldn't go against it because it's great to see different forms of questions on the paper."

A report from The Irish Times on the possible extinction in the next century of languages with fewer than one million speakers was "very topical given the subject of Teilifis na Gaeilge and shows the breadth of this subject",

Mr Whyte noted.

Mr Wright said the language question was demanding since it was asking about a very small section of the course. In the economic geography section, the chart detailing population trends in eight countries might have been initially confusing, he said, and he noted that its emphasis on the role of women and inputs, processes and outputs in manufacturing and agriculture followed on from the Junior Cert.

The regional geography section was very good", he said, with a wide range of options for students. He welcomed the simple and straightforward language used in the paper, particularly the departure from lengthy quotes from books and journals which had been a feature of the paper in previous years.

Both teachers welcomed the examination of field work on this year's paper, which Mr Whyte said would encourage teachers and students to take part in such work in the knowledge that it would be rewarded. "Overall, it was an excellent paper and people should do well," he concluded.

As at higher level, Mr Whyte was pleased to see the combination of Ordnance Survey map and photograph in question 6, while he described the questions on physical geography as "very straightforward". Once again, typicality was in evidence on the paper, with questions on the north south divide which allowed students to demonstrate their knowledge of current issues and the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots".

Similarly, question 18 on world geography asked students to link four places (Brazil, Northern Ireland, South Africa and Rwanda) with issues of concern in each of them, including the abolition of apartheid, rain forest destruction, racial conflict and the peace process.

"The paper doesn't pose much of a problem for ordinary level students," Mr Wright said. He also complimented the simple, straightforward language of the questions and said he was pleased to see a diagram used to illustrate question 4, which would assist students in answering the question.