LEAVING CERT BIOLOGY:HARD-WORKING students were rewarded by biology papers that tested a broad range and depth of knowledge, and there were no surprises for the well prepared, according to teachers.

Higher level students were pleased with what they saw. “It was a good paper,” said Tim O’Meara, TUI representative. “It tested the students’ factual as well as their applied knowledge.”

The paper is divided into three sections – short questions, practical and long questions – although Móna Murray, a biology teacher in the Institute of Education said, “The reality is that the paper is a sequence of short questions. For the most part, students were not given the opportunity to develop answers for themselves. It was more of a ‘what is?’ as opposed to ‘describe’ approach to questions. This is a pattern that has developed over recent years.”

The short questions were described by teachers as “straightforward”. However, question two, on genetics, was atypical in that students were required to calculate an answer. “It was fine, but it was an unusual question for that section,” said ASTI representative Lily Cronin. “I think that to have something unusual like that so early on in the exam might have thrown some.

“Questions on experiments were for the most part good,” said Murray. “The only issue I had was that students were asked to describe the dissection of a heart in Question 7,” said O’Meara. “A heart dissection . . . is much easier to do than to describe.”

Question 8, which asked questions about five different experiments, was praised by Murray as, “a very good test of practical knowledge [that] rewarded the time spent by students in the laboratory”.

The longer questions covered a great range of topics from DNA and RNA to ecology and the digestive system. “There was a good spread of topics there,” Cronin said.

The DNA question was demanding, according to teachers. “It was detailed and used very technical terminology,” said Murray. “If you didn’t know the detail there was no hiding it,” agreed Cronin.

Students were asked to draw three diagrams in the course of the paper, a move that Cronin described as “a bit old fashioned”.

A question on ecology was “interesting and topical”, Cronin said. “Students were given data relating to pollution in a river and asked to provide explanations regarding the changes presented in the data,” Murray added. “It was refreshing to see.”

The final question on the paper featured human reproduction – a topic that has turned up for six years in a row.

Biology is the most popular science at Leaving Cert level. Just over 30,000 students took the subject this year, with more than 25,000 doing so at higher level.

The remaining 5,000 ordinary level students found their paper to be testing in parts but overall a fair test of their knowledge, Cronin said.

“I thought that there was a good, broad spectrum of topics asked,” he said. “The question on genetics was very nice.”

Teachers praised the layout of the paper, which was student-friendly and well presented. Ordinary level students who had put the work in would have been happy, they said. “The paper was demanding enough, but would have suited students who worked on past papers,” O’Meara said. “It was a fair test overall.”