Junior Cert Business: Dragons’ Den

RTE’s entrepreneurial dragons were waiting in their den for students in their higher level business paper. Examiners had clearly made an effort to link the questions to students’ real world experience in a set of papers that were fair but would have kept students busy for the duration.

Students needed to use all of the time allocated for both papers according to Sr Mary O'Connell of the Business Studies Teachers' Association. Overall, students who had worked hard through the year would have had their efforts rewarded, according to David Duffy of the TUI.

The day was a long one for higher level students who sat a business studies-focused paper in the morning and an accounting-heavy paper in the afternoon. Paper one started with short questions, which were “fair overall,” according to O’Connell.

A manageable selection of longer questions followed. Topical questions included one about a female football fan heading to Brazil for the world cup and the exchange rates she would have encountered. “It was nice to see this kind of question on the paper,” Duffy said.

Paper two was "fairly predictable," according to O'Connell. There were some interesting questions: the business start-up, company formation and marketing question was the one that featured the Dragons' Den, and there was an industrial relations question about a Dublin Bus strike. There was a slight possibility for confusion in the wording of one of those questions according to O'Connell. "It could have been clearer," she said.

At ordinary level, students encountered a “doable,” paper said Duffy.

Questions were fine, but difficult enough for true ordinary level students, O’Connell said. “I do think the ordinary level paper needs to be a little less taxing for the level,” O’Connell said. “There are ordinary level students who work very hard indeed and yet parts of the paper seem to be aimed at the student who could do higher level but has decided not to. I’m not sure that’s fair to the true ordinary level student.”