The biology of frogs has left Leaving Cert students hopping mad, it seems. A question on yesterday’s biology paper asked students to describe an experiment on the dissection of a tadpole.
While the topic is a suggested activity on the Leaving Cert syllabus, frogs are by law a protected species and it is illegal to capture and kill them, hence many teachers skip the subject.
It appears a number of students who sat yesterday’s paper had not covered the topic.
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Students and parents say being asked to describe an experiment on a protected species is "controversial" and "unfair".
The National Parents Council accused the Department of Education of a "major breach of faith" in posing a question.
The Department confirmed to ireland.comit had received a number of queries from anxious students and parents about the question.
A spokesman said: "The experiment questioned on the Leaving Cert biology higher level paper yesterday is a suggested activity only on the syllabus. It is not mandatory".
He said said the Department has a licence from Dúchas which allows schools to collect frog spawn.
"Teachers have the option of describing the experiment and its result to students or it can be shown by using film.
"There is no cruelty involved in the experiment and frogs are released back into the wild after the experiment," he said.
However, the National Parents Council claimed: "There should not be questions on any exam paper that are not covered by an active syllabus, therefore questions on dissecting frogs and tadpoles is not an acceptable question."
A spokesman for the council said it would be looking for an immediate meeting with the Department of Education and the Minister to sort out how this particular paper is going to be marked.
"As we see it there were sections of the paper which did not come under the syllabus, so, the paper should only be marked on the questions relevant to the syllabus," he said.
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