Teachers and students left with quibbles and gripes

TEACHERS had some quibbles about the second Leaving Certificate Irish paper.

Robbie Cronin, an ASTI subject representative who teaches at Marian College, Dublin, said both the higher and ordinary level papers opened with “difficult” comprehension pieces.

The higher level text he was unhappy about was about the Census. “While there was no doubting the answers to the questions are there, I would say that it was both a challenging and unattractive piece,” he said.

Ruth Morrissey, a TUI subject representative and teacher at St Michael’s Community College, Kilmihil, Co Clare, was critical of the prose question about the film ‘Cáca Milis’.

“It was very hard to understand what they were looking for,” she said.

Ms Morrissey described the ordinary level paper as student friendly.

It was biology in the afternoon and, while there was some student griping on Twitter, ASTI subject representative Lily Cronin felt the higher level paper “reflected well on the specification”.

But a TUI spokesperson described it as “challenging” with “a different feel than past years, with more open questions asking students to explain rather than give a one word or short sentence answer” and no diagrams as prompts in section C.

Ms Cronin described the ordinary level paper as “fair and well presented”.