2 days ago
Leaving Cert Reaction: Louise Boylan looks at Maths Higher Level Paper 1
RTÉ Study Hub regular Louise Boylan, maths teacher at The Institute of Education, gives her expert opinion on the Leaving Cert Maths Higher Level Paper 1 exam - shared from their Leaving Cert Analysis series.
Key Points
A paper with an off-putting appearance but many manageable elements.
Continues the trend of pulling material from unexamined areas of the Project Maths Course.
Download the Leaving Cert Higher Level Paper 1 exam paper here.
Louise says: "Students likely won't feel triumphant as they leave the exam hall, but they shouldn't feel defeated. While there was a lot that was out of the box – logic puzzle style questions, material that hasn't appeared since the course's overhaul – there was much that would be welcome. Algebraic skills, Rates of Change, Differential Calculus, and Sequence and Series would all have fallen into the familiar.
Yet the elements of the paper that will stand out to everyone will be those more novel aspects, the things that past papers won't have shown them. Within a number of questions there was something challenging. The 2nd part of Q2, the middle of Q4 and the end of Q5 all added stings to otherwise approachable questions. However, if students could take a moment to breathe and look past their initial reactions, they will see that the question setter has given some helpful hints. Question 4 (b) told you the theorem and expression to use and 5 (c) bolded the font of one line to draw the student's attention to it.
Later in the paper, Question 7's wall of text will have caused some to pause, but once that was parsed, the underlying Sequences and Series were familiar. While Question 8 straddled a wide range of topics, Question 9 was neatly in line with previous work. The concluding Question 10 may have more resembled an aptitude test rather than an application of learned methods.
This was a challenging paper but challenging for everyone sitting it as the question setter continues the trend of drawing from all corners of the course. As such there was material examined on the paper that simply wasn't present in past exams and some students will rightly feel that they were pushed beyond their comfort zone. However, with much that will earn them marks, they shouldn't focus solely on the negative – the marking will reflect the challenge.
