LEAVING CERTIFICATE/Biology: The Higher Level Biology paper drew a strongly negative reaction from both teachers and pupils.
Last night, some teachers said their pupils were distressed and very anxious after the exam. One leading expert said the exam was designed to find out what the students did not know. Another teacher of 30 years standing said it was "the worst biology paper" he had seen.
The difficulty of the exam is certain to generate controversy - when the Government is making feverish efforts to arrest the alarming fall-off in the numbers taking science subjects.
Mr Joe Reville, vice-chairman of the Irish Science Teachers' Association, was very critical of the paper. Mr Reville - who teaches at Terenure College and is an expert for skool.ie - said the old reliables were all missing.
"Full questions on plant life cycles, animal life cycles and photosynthesis were not present. This was all very different to previous years and a very untypical biology exam paper. Everything was legitimate but not quite what the students were entitled to expect going on past papers," he said.
Mr Reville said there appeared to be an attempt to find out what the students did not know. "But the biology syllabus is far too big to expect students to cover it all in detail - most students are selective about the areas they study - they just cannot do it all, " he said.
He also expressed surprise that students were asked to dissect a rabbit even though many would object to this.
Ms Catherine Pattersall from Sutton Park School said the exam was very tough and very cryptic. She had expected a full question on genetics but this did not materialise. "There was a question on seaweed but the diagram accompanying it was ambiguous. This paper touched on marginal elements of the course and tended to stray away from core elements. This was an extremely tough paper; one of the toughest in recent years.
These views were shared by Mr Ray McGough of the TUI, who teaches in Maghene College, Bundoran, Co Donegal. Students emerging from the paper used the same words to describe it; "terrible", "awful", "horrible", he said.
Mr McGough also expressed concern about a question in which students were asked to describe an experiment "you would carry out to investigate the effect of thyroxine or iodine concentration on the metamorphosis of frog tadpoles". He expressed astonishment with the question as the use of frogs for experiments has been illegal for some time. This, he said, was another example of how a 20-year old syllabus did not always reflect current practice.
One question which drew general approval was that on human population trends. Students were asked to study a graph detailing the increase in world population and they were asked to explain the various trends. One teacher said the question was "relatively easy on a very difficult paper".
