'Nice' choices for unsurprising paper

"FAIR" and '"nice" were the words widely used by teachers and pupils to sum up unsurprising Junior Certificate geography papers.

It is an important subject at this level, the fourth most popular after English, civic, social and political education (CSPE) and maths.

Jacqueline Sheil of TUI, and Borris Vocational School in Carlow, raised only one issue, and it was with the ordinary level paper.

She felt that the statistical diagrams question, 4A, could provide difficulty for a pupil at that level. Otherwise, the questions were clear and pitched at the appropriate level, said Ms Sheil.

Her higher-level students described their paper as "nice". It was, she said, easily understood, with a good choice of questions, excellent use -- and variety -- of colour visuals such as photos, charts and diagrams.

The only question that may have presented a challenge was the short one on the make-up of the earth, where they had to identify the inner core and the outer core, rather than simply the core.

Jimmy Staunton of the ASTI and Sligo Grammar School described the compulsory 20 short questions as very fair.

Students would also have been happy with the good choice of questions in other sections. They were questions that would have presented no problems, he added.

Irish Independent