Making the leaving harder??

Orlaladuck

Hmm how about this angle : This is the argument's sake but what about the actual day itself? Things might not go well for you - questions you might struggle with even if expected. I know a friend of mine who got constant A's through 6th year in english then got a C in the real thing despite working and she just had a bad day on the exam.
Take today for example on art history, the gallery questioned appeared as always but said 'compare a small scale museum to a large one'. Noone I know (with exceptions on the forum) saw that or prepared for it - Sure there's other questions but I went to 4 different galleries in the last 2 years, one on my own to see half the paintings we study to get a better grasp on them and then that happened and I was gutted for the first few minutes I read that. Loads of other people I know were as well and that wasn't just down to prediction, it was just down to the question. See what I'm getting at? Just saying though

klose

spurious wrote: »

Part of the trouble is book companies not publishing books that reflect the syllabus fully, coupled with over-reliance on text books.
Metamorphic rocks in Ireland might not be in the book, but it's on the syllabus and a 'good' teacher (not one who hands out notes) should have covered it.

Personally, I would have expected an LC student with a bit of cop on to have asked in class while doing metamorphic rocks 'what would an Irish example be?' or taken the miniscule steps involved to find out themselves.

True, but i think students should have confidence in their text books and say to themselves 'thisn is all i need to know' not 'ill ask everything thats not in the book' my art histroy book was particularly bad so my teacher, who is excellent, though us by powerpoints and handouts of them..so

bubblz

Orlaladuck wrote: »

Hmm how about this angle : This is the argument's sake but what about the actual day itself? Things might not go well for you - questions you might struggle with even if expected. I know a friend of mine who got constant A's through 6th year in english then got a C in the real thing despite working and she just had a bad day on the exam.

Totally agree... last year i was an A/B student.. teacher said she expected me not to get lower then a B.. but then the exam just didnt go right for me on the day I ended up with a C3.. while another lad in the class who did nothing all year got a B3

EuropeanSon

whippedcream wrote: »

True, but i think students should have confidence in their text books and say to themselves 'thisn is all i need to know' not 'ill ask everything thats not in the book' my art histroy book was particularly bad so my teacher, who is excellent, though us by powerpoints and handouts of them..so

Our chemistry teacher does that. I've never even opened the textbook.

Bob the Builder

I agree with Spurious that a lot depends on the teacher.

However, I think the Leaving Certificate is too small a scope to base anyone's ability on.

I spent the last two years of my life working diligently on every committee in my school, travelling the length and breadth of Mayo doing committee work and singing the praises of my school and then got suspended because I went on a Lunch Break early, my first offence ever basically. Two days suspension without warning or anything. I got shafted by my own school who I did nothing but work for. And the amount of lost ground I had to make up for in the last month before LC as well as keeping up with a six-days-a-week job, did not help me in anyway in my Leaving Cert.

Hence, I'm going back next year and I'm going to a different school. I feel so betrayed by my school and I have nobody to blame for it but myself. And whilst I know this is a rant, I see it as a reflection on any person, that the Leaving Cert is far too narrow to base anyone's intelligence on.

And my poor results that I will get in August, will not have been through laziness or lack of intelligence. But lack of income and lack of wisdom and for that reason, I'll be back next year...

Ruski

Orlaladuck wrote: »

Hmm how about this angle : This is the argument's sake but what about the actual day itself? Things might not go well for you - questions you might struggle with even if expected. I know a friend of mine who got constant A's through 6th year in english then got a C in the real thing despite working and she just had a bad day on the exam.
Take today for example on art history, the gallery questioned appeared as always but said 'compare a small scale museum to a large one'. Noone I know (with exceptions on the forum) saw that or prepared for it - Sure there's other questions but I went to 4 different galleries in the last 2 years, one on my own to see half the paintings we study to get a better grasp on them and then that happened and I was gutted for the first few minutes I read that. Loads of other people I know were as well and that wasn't just down to prediction, it was just down to the question. See what I'm getting at? Just saying though

There are always ways of overcoming problems of being unprepared. Like for English, I was one of those lazy eejits who only studied Boland. On the day I managed to rattle off five pages on Kavanagh. I made up half of my geography exam on the spot. Maths, I've been studying for the large majority of the past four months, after failing nearly every Maths class test over the past two years, I'm hoping I got a C in the exam.

What I'm babbling on about here is working a way around any hiccups that you may find on a question that you're unsure of. Observing the exam systematically and just going by what you can do to find some sort of solution to any question.

klose

Ruski wrote: »

There are always ways of overcoming problems of being unprepared. Like for English, I was one of those lazy eejits who old studied Boland. On the day I managed to rattle off five pages on Kavanagh. I made up half of my geography exam on the spot. Maths, I've been studying for the large majority of the past four months, after failing nearly every Maths class test over the past two years, I'm hoping I got a C in the exam.

What I'm babbling on about here is working a way around any hiccups that you may find on a question that you're unsure of. Observing the exam systematically and just going by what you can do to find some sort of solution to any question.

...ehh...ya must have studied some of kavanagh if thats the case, ya cant wing 5 pages on something yav never looked at..?

s0ur_cherry

I think they have gradually made English - particularly paper 2 - harder over the past few years. The questions on the poets are much more specific than they used to be, also the questions on the comparative have followed the same trend. As for Maths, I think it was actually a bit easier this year, probably trying to ease into the new course, instead of such a sudden dramatic decrease in difficulty. The rest seem to be more or less the same, although biology was a bit.. different this year.

loocas

johnmcdnl wrote: »

people seriously need to get over boland at this stage... ffs - you learned one poet and expected to get away with it one poet.. in fairness

Right you are! Don't put all your eggs in the one basket an' all that.

Orlaladuck

Ruski wrote: »

There are always ways of overcoming problems of being unprepared. Like for English, I was one of those lazy eejits who only studied Boland. On the day I managed to rattle off five pages on Kavanagh. I made up half of my geography exam on the spot. Maths, I've been studying for the large majority of the past four months, after failing nearly every Maths class test over the past two years, I'm hoping I got a C in the exam.

What I'm babbling on about here is working a way around any hiccups that you may find on a question that you're unsure of. Observing the exam systematically and just going by what you can do to find some sort of solution to any question.

I get exactly what you mean there and parts of the LC do challenge that like English Paper 1 and sure I like the challenge but people who want to just get by I feel sorry for in those cases.

Bob the Builder

whippedcream wrote: »

...ehh...ya must have studied some of kavanagh if thats the case, ya cant wing 5 pages on something yav never looked at..?

Kavanagh is an accessible poet. As long as you can quote a few lines out of Kavanagh, you can write about it. He isn't like Elliot where you are trying to get interpretations that aren't there. The question on Kavanagh was about transformation - Canal Bank Walk and/or Lines Written... I could have easily nailed 5 pages on him if I had longer than an hour to do it.

Ruski wrote: »

What I'm babbling on about here is working a way around any hiccups that you may find on a question that you're unsure of. Observing the exam systematically and just going by what you can do to find some sort of solution to any question.

Thats a good attitude to have. It will serve you well

randylonghorn

Bob the Builder wrote: »

I spent the last two years of my life working diligently on every committee in my school, travelling the length and breadth of Mayo doing committee work and singing the praises of my school and then got suspended because I went on a Lunch Break early, my first offence ever basically. Two days suspension without warning or anything.

That's a bit ... well, sh1t, tbh.

Ok, break the rules, take the consequences ... but still, if the picture you paint is accurate, sounds like a little bit of leeway would have been in order.

Ruski

whippedcream wrote: »

...ehh...ya must have studied some of kavanagh if thats the case, ya cant wing 5 pages on something yav never looked at..?

What do you mean, never looked at? Of course I covered a variety of poets in class but I was banking on Boland. Kavanagh was fresh in my mind from a recent revision class that my teacher organised.

Bob the Builder

randylonghorn wrote: »

That's a bit ... well, sh1t, tbh.

Ok, break the rules, take the consequences ... but still, if the picture you paint is accurate, sounds like a little bit of leeway would have been in order.

Ah really, like I know I broke the rules and I know there are penalties in place for breaking the rules but that demoralised me completely.

Either way, on the last week of school I vented my anger at the management of the school, and I can only hope that they will try and cop on, but I don't see that happening. I'm awaiting what the result of a Whole School Evaluation has to say. Report will be published in the next few weeks and I'll decide what I am doing then. If this years graduating students don't speak up, then nobody will, which I really pity...

EvilLlamaThingy

I didn't think it was harder in English, just more unpredictable. Whether that was intentional or not I don't know.. though imo Yeats was as heavily predicted as Boland.

Irish... haven't a clue. Switched on the day.

Maths was harder. Some people are saying it was the easiest in years.. I really strongly disagree. I had no trouble doing any of the papers in exam papers a few days before, and did abysmal on that paper..

French.. Tapework seemed harder unless you know archaeology terms..

Biology wasn't harder, but it was very very badly phrased in multiple questions, which gave the impression that it was harder..

All imo of course.

fauxshow

I do think there's an element of it's harder being in the exam room than looking at past papers at home, but even comparing some of my papers to the past ones now, in some instances there are a few nasty questions on the 2010 lot. A tougher paper will have an easier marking scheme... like last year's French paper and especially listening was very easy, but they put a horrendous marking scheme that was changed about fifty times at the conferences so that they could eventually reflect the bell curve and the national average... they seem to want results to remain roughly the same each year.

It seems like they are trying to stop grade inflation, and also making questions quite specific to stop people vomiting learnt off material onto the page... it also really seems like the SEC are out to get grind schools. Don't blame the Institute, they're just working with the idiotic education and college applications system that's been put in place... we really need to adopt a model similar to the UCAS, which is the British CAO, or change our education system with a model similar to England/Wales A Levels or the International Bac

randylonghorn

fauxshow wrote: »

... it also really seems like the SEC are out to get grind schools.

Out to get the grind schools?

Or anxious to discourage the culture they represent?

stainluss

randylonghorn wrote: »

Who dictates when people are "meant to" go to college?

Is it in the constitution? ... in some law?

I'm not trying to be sarky, but just because most people in this country have traditionally gone to college immediately after secondary school doesn't mean that pattern is divinely ordained in any way.

But many people are going just because they have have nothing to do, they will get social welfare and grants as mature students, afaik its around the same as they get on the dole, so of course they're going to think "might aswell get a qualification while Im at it".

For many of them, it isnt as important as it is to someone coming out of school who really wants this for their life.

Of course this doesnt apply to all mature students, but the recent increases arent due to all these extra people having an epiphany about their true calling in life:rolleyes:

Bob the Builder

To be honest with you, the SEC attitude of actually putting some element of natural intelligence rather than regurgitated crap into the exam papers is certainly a welcome one.

klose

randylonghorn wrote: »

Out to get the grind schools?

Or anxious to discourage the culture they represent?

Interesting way to look at it,

I credit the people who came up with the concept of grinds schools which was essentially exploiting the system perhaps this will bring about a decline which i would welcome because as a student i seemed to have developed a natural hatred of grind school students who i dont even know hahahah:rolleyes:

Bob the Builder

These grinds schools are great for exploiting a vulnerable system, but imho, do little by way of giving students any sort of intelligence...

stainluss

Bob the Builder wrote: »

These grinds schools are great for exploiting a vulnerable system, but imho, do little by way of giving students any sort of intelligence...

I dont think regular schools are that great at it either.

The LC is flawed, imo continuous assesment would seperate the dedicated people from the crammers and the predictors.

ceol18

to be honest i think everyone who does the leaving is going to argue that their year was the hardest year. there HAVE been some surprises this year (boland, art history etc) but aren't there every year??? my sister's year (2006) there was a freak question on biology to create your own key to recognise organisms...?? when we asked my teacher about it she said "Oh, i wouldn't worry about that, they'll never be asking anything like that again.." as if complaints and whatever else had been made about it.
my point is that there's always going to be surprises and predictions going wrong-otherwise it wouldn't be right to call it an exam!

i do think however that on
English P2- the whole boland thing, obviously
Irish - that an triail question threw alot of people, i was ok but alot of people i know weren't
Maths - OL, the c parts being HL standard? (maths isn't my strongest, so i wouldn't argue if others found them easy)
Biology - repeating IAA, and also the mixture of exp qs was odd (again, i found this alright, but it was really a bit sneaky)
Art history - i don't do this, but people told me about newgrange not coming up or something?
i don't know, it does seem like there have been a fair few surprises this year, but then again, i've never done the leaving before, so in fairness i wouldn't have anything to compare it to. ultimately i think that whatever about college places and stuff, the department don't do these things out of spite. it's not as if they're trying to make life harder for us, they're just trying to ensure that people who deserve to do well, do, and those who don't, don't.

fauxshow

I know lots of people in the Institute, and it's honestly not how people portray it... the teachers work their backsides off, they have optional extra creative writing workshops, in 5th year there are extra curricular activities and if you want to you can do stuff during 6th year too. Teachers also seem to really care about their pupils there and getting everyone to do their personal best, they stay on the ball because they have a duty to do so and lots of them give extra classes and do everything they can to help the students who need it. Yes, teachers get commission for good results, but it means they're motivated to work as hard as they can and work their students hard too... I wish I could say that about some of my teachers.

And again, the grind schools culture has only emerged because of the examinations and university applications system that has emerged in this country. If there wasn't a points race, if exams relied less on technique and learning how to beat the system and answering to an ''examiner-friendly'' format, and if the university applications process changed so that we had conditional offers dependent on achieving certain grades in subjects relevant to our course choice (grade inflation and changing demand mean that you don't even know exactly what to be aiming for to secure your course which is ridiculous) then grind schools wouldn't exist. And it's not fair to punish the pupils of the grind school for trying to maximise their chances in an idiotic education system... I have friends there repeating their leaving cert, or who went for 6th year because due to illness they missed 2/3 of 5th year and basically needed the one year LC course

Handsome Bob

randylonghorn wrote: »

I do agree that there is a move towards less predictability though, and rightly so.

Aye, predicting was so easy in 2005. I mean hell, I still got a B1 in honours History without a special topic (teacher=disaster) because I was able to predict with ease 5 essays that would come up.

However I think this is the point of the OP, for years and years so many students performed well, not so much because they put in a crazy amount of effort but because they sifted through past exam papers and recognised patterns (and in turn crammed). Patterns that the higher ups were too lazy to avoid.

Thus, I think the OP has a point. It seems pretty unfair to be wildly unpredictable within the current format of LC while so many previous years got an "easy ride". If they wanted to shake things up, they should be overhauling the LC completely, instead of being difficult for the sake of being diificult.

sarahisdeadly

EvilLlamaThingy wrote: »

Maths was harder. Some people are saying it was the easiest in years.. I really strongly disagree. I had no trouble doing any of the papers in exam papers a few days before, and did abysmal on that paper.

Totally agree with you on this one.

randylonghorn

stainluss wrote: »

But many people are going just because they have have nothing to do, they will get social welfare and grants as mature students, afaik its around the same as they get on the dole, so of course they're going to think "might aswell get a qualification while Im at it".

For many of them, it isnt as important as it is to someone coming out of school who really wants this for their life.

Of course this doesnt apply to all mature students, but the recent increases arent due to all these extra people having an epiphany about their true calling in life:rolleyes:

No, but I think you might be under-estimating the extent to which people are going back because they understand the need to upskill and to upgrade their qualifications if they personally (or indeed the Irish economy) is to survive in the future, rather than because they have nothing to do.

I never quite get why people find it so difficult to understand how people would finish LC in a booming economy, look around them and say "Hmmm. Maybe I'll work for a few years while times are good, by the time I came out of college it might all have gone bottom-up!" ... as indeed it had for those who went in in 2005 or 2006.

The reality is that 18 year olds have no more moral or actual right to a college place than a 25 or 30 or even a 40 year old.

Not to mention, ofc, the obvious fact that *most* mature students enter college by a different mechanism, and don't really impact on your chances of a place in any case.

Bob the Builder wrote: »

These grinds schools are great for exploiting a vulnerable system, but imho, do little by way of giving students any sort of intelligence...

In fairness, no school imparts intelligence ... the best you can hope for is a broad education and some ability to think critically ... which is something which seems to have a lower priority all round these days.

fauxshow wrote: »

And it's not fair to punish the pupils of the grind school for trying to maximise their chances in an idiotic education system...

How are they being punished though?

By the SEC making papers less predictable? ... and seeking to examine the actual course, rather than just the hot tips?

Think about the logic of that argument.

LZ5by5 wrote: »

It seems pretty unfair to be wildly unpredictable within the current format of LC while so many previous years got an "easy ride".

In fairness, despite what you might read in this forum, they haven't been wildly unpredictable, or anything even remotely close.

A couple of minor hiccups, a warning shot across the bows, blown wildly out of proportion ...

LZ5by5 wrote: »

If they wanted to shake things up, they should be overhauling the LC completely ...

Ah well, you know damn well we won't disagree on that one.

JellyBeans92

Orlaladuck wrote: »

But how can you define who's an idiot and who's not? At the end of the day most LC subjects are learn off and regurgitate onto paper. I've never seen someone who gets 600 points as smart, they just have a good memory to absorb information.

From what I'm getting from doing this year LC is that the department only wants people who genuinely deserve the top marks to get them, and to deter this principle of rote learning that has existed for too long.

I mean, like grades are overall lower the college points will be lower to reflect this change, but it will just mean these people who just learned off a pile of tips won't get away with that kinda nonsense.

**Timbuk2**

I'm going to disagree with a lot of people, and say that the exams aren't as hard as they can sometimes be. They are even quite predictable.

English HL: 4 poets tipped, 3 of them came up. A very good result in my eyes. Yes no Boland, but studying only 1/8 of the poets is too risky. It isn't the first year. In 2005 Emily Dickinson was the Boland at the time, and she didn't come up - instead Patrick Kavanagh did.

Irish HL Paper One was quite unusual, but is difficult to predict for. Paper two was exactly the predictions that I heard. As I flicked through the paper, there were absolutely no surprises. The An Triail Question was hard, but it wouldn't be the first time.

Geography HL A lot of people are saying that they were being a bit too specific, but they aren't even being as specific as they can be. As per the syllabus, they can specify exactly what they want, e.g. Tertiary in a European Peripheral region

French HL Hard enough, but standard

Maths HL Both papers were worringly easy. Normally, A1 students hate to see easy papers as they don't discriminate - A1 students usually get ahead of the gang by being able to do difficult part C's. As there were no overtly difficult part C's, it's now simply a competition of who made the least small mistakes, e.g. dropping minus signs, remembering absolute values and forgetting the + Cs in integration

gant0

Don't forget the fact there wasn't a single theorem in HL maths.so lucky as I hadn't studyied any but I'd hate to have spent countless hours learning them off and not even get 20 marks from it.Guess that may have trewn a few people.