Leaving Cert biology - post-mortem: The third slap in "an outrageous triple-whammy" is how Mr John MacGabhann, education and research officer of the TUI, has described yesterday's honours Leaving Cert biology paper.
Such a paper would ensure that Junior Cert students would be terrified to take Leaving Cert level Science, he said.
The papers were "designed to scare kids out of their wits and into silence".
"It's positively idiotic for those who set the paper to parade their own knowledge as opposed to allowing students to parade theirs," he said.
Mr Michael Telford, of the John Scottus School in Dublin, said the paper was "sneaky", "lacking in compassion" and showed "a negative attitude towards examining, which should stop".
The "punitive" paper was replete with terminology that even some teachers did not know, Mr MacGabhann said. It was completely at odds with the Minister for Education's aim of increasing the number of students taking science.
Students are deserting science in droves, the president of IBEC, Mr Brendan Butler, wrote in The Irish Times yesterday.
About two-thirds of the 23,400 students taking biology opted for the higher paper.
Ms Mary Delaney, a teacher in Castlebar, Co Mayo, said that the honours paper was "an absolute disgrace to give to students, considering the decline in the numbers of students taking science".
Mr Tim O'Meara, TUI representative in biology, explained that there were too many specific definitions required and not enough "catch-all" questions.
The terminology used required all-or-nothing answers. If a student did not understand an unusual term, such as "photolysis" - which several teachers professed not to know - then the student would be penalised.
"Photolysis" is the chemical breakdown or decomposition of matter caused by absorption of light.
Mr Telford criticised the paper's concentration on plant physiology, leaving out major topics such as enzymes and the human reproductive system.
"Every single question was difficult and it put the students under undue pressure," he said.
"You don't need to place students under pressure to find out who knows the most."
Mr Bob Dowling, an ASTI spokesman and a teacher at Árd Scoil Ris, Dublin, thought that both the higher- and ordinary-level papers were "predictable and traditional with few surprises".
The higher paper would have been more suitable for a third-level institution, he added.
"It was a boring kind of swansong to the syllabus, showing a lack of imagination," he concluded.
The ordinary-level paper was "quite difficult, testing and demanding", but not as difficult as the honours paper, Mr O'Meara commented.
Although, like the honours paper, the ordinary-level paper did suffer from obscure phrasing of questions, when a directness of language would have been kinder.
Agricultural science, taken by 3,000 yesterday, was "not bad at all" at honours level, said Mr Pádraig Brennan of Roscommon Vocational School.
But the ordinary paper was "quite difficult considering that it was aimed at pass pupils. Some of the material belonged in a higher paper".
The higher agricultural science paper included a complex question on genetics that many students would have found extremely challenging, Mr Dowling said.
A question on "metabolism" would also have been off-putting for some.
This is the first year of the new agricultural science syllabus, in which 25 per cent of the students' marks are awarded by the class teacher for practical work over two years.