Are exams getting easier?

A chara, – In her excellent article “Spare a thought for the Junior Cycle students of 2022″ (Opinion, June 11th), Breda O’Brien compares the Inter Cert English paper of 1987 with this year’s Junior Cert English paper.

She reminds readers that in 1987 students faced far more challenging questions than they do today – and points out that in 1987 students were asked to “write out the clauses into which you would separate the following sentence, indicating the subject and predicate of each clause and state the function of each subordinate clause”.

Readers might be interested to know that 30 years earlier – in 1957 – students sitting the Primary Cert exam (at the end of sixth class in primary school) were faced with the following question: In the following sentence: “With a good night to the worthy pair I mounted the narrow stairs”, name the Subject, Predicate and Object of the sentence and state what Part of Speech is each of the underlined words.

They were also asked to explain the following words: weather-bound; betray; pursuers; communicative; ill-favoured; delude. Among the choice of essays they were required to write were “The Day the Circus Came” or “Postage Stamps”.