Junior Certificate CSPE - Civic, Social & Political Education

Art - Common Level

The relaxed attitudes of students across the school, coming up from a lunch time game of football spoke wonders in itself. ''Oh sure it's only CSPE...''. The exam paper itself reflected this I believe. Four pictures of buildings; Áras an Úachtairáin, The Four Courts, The Central Bank and Leinster house appeared and students were to match them to the provided images. Very handy I thought. The short questions were also a bit too manageable. The Document Questions included a piece on recycling and the water charges which was naturally was a bit of fun to argue out on the page. UN Peacekeeping, The Nobel Peace Prize and European Elections also came up. For my long question I decided to write about the Ombudsman for Children. Two pages in I had just finished the six mark letter question. With time to burn I managed another two pages on the extra sheet provided.The second part was on reasons why it is important for children to take part in appointing the ombudsman. Finally, you had to give 3 ideas on promoting Children's Rights. Easy! Was very happy with it I must say. Though I am a little concerned about the reputation of the subject and lack of challenge behind it for the most part!

Helen - Common Level

I like it when you can walk into an exam and know that you have 60 per cent of it completed already. The short questions were a mix between organisations and your European studies along with a few others. I did questions 1,2 and 3 which were about Malala, Aid etc. For the long questions, I choose to go with Question 1, which was centered around the Special Olympics. I felt happy with how this paper went.

Jane - Common Level

Ahhhh, CSPE. After getting full marks in my pre I wasn't too stressed about my junior cert, and we already had 60% of the exam done so I was pretty happy going in. I love CSPE, due to my involvement with student politics and Comhairle na nÓg, so when most other people had left the exam centre an hour in, I was on my sixth A4 page of my long question! (Yes I wrote eight A4 pages on the ombudsman for children).It might sound totally ridiculous, but I am really passionate about children's rights and really value the presence of the ombudsman, so I enjoyed talking about my feelings towards the role. I'm very happy with how the exam went, and looking forward to receiving my result in September. All I'm hoping is that my examiner is equally passionate about the ombudsman, and doesn't mind reading eight pages of my scrawled handwriting on a hot summers day!Please note: Blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union.

Leaving Certificate Irish Paper 1

Joanna - Higher Level

I was very anxious when we were handed the exam paper. My teacher gave us so many essays to prepare and I had so many coloured cards with all sorts of vocabulary for the exam, I knew it was all too much and reading over it was driving me crazy. I wanted to get the exam out of the way. As much as I tried to relax, I couldn't help but tremble a bit as I could finally turn over the exam paper to start the tape exam. The CD was already playing, and there was little time to read the questions. On top of that, the recordings only played twice. Thankfully, most were easy enough to get, and some of the answers were repeated two or three times within the one recording, so we had many opportunities to listen back to try and figure out the right spelling. I'm not good with accents, so I'm not sure if it was Donegal Irish or something else, but the whole middle section was definitely more difficult to understand. However, I left no blanks and think I did okay. Or at least that's what I kept telling myself to stay calm ahead of the big essay.I was relieved when we could finally look at the essay titles. I went ahead with the one about new technologies since I was looking over cyber bullying just before the exam and could only really talk about drugs and alcohol in terms of sport, which I didn't feel would be enough. Anyway, I think the amount of time given to write that one essay (compared to how tightly packed the second paper is) is ridiculous and although almost everyone was finished long before the exam, the extra time that I had left made me particularly anxious. I finished and had almost an hour to look over. On the one hand, it was nice to have time to read over my work for once during these exams, but on the other, the longer time meant that I wrote more and I'm worried that I made more grammar mistakes than I would have made if I had tried to be more concise.Caithfidh mé admháil, tá mé ar mhuin na muice anois agus an chead páipéir críochnaithe, ach tá imní orm mar i mo bharúil, tá an dara páipéir níos deacra. Beidh an scrúdu bitheolaíocht ann amarach freisin, cinnte go mbeadh sé an lá is measa de na scrúidaithe! Ach tar éis amarach, tá dhá scrúidaithe níos éasca agam, agus níl aon scrúdu agam dé hAoine. Tá plean agam dul go dtí oifig an ISSU chun dearmad a dhéanamh ar na scrúdaithe ar feadh lá amhain agus béidir dul go dtí Stephens Green ag am lón le mo chara. Ansin, caithfidh mé a lán obair a dhéanamh ar feadh deireadh seachtaine, ach beidh mé beagnach críochnaithe, mar sin, tá mé ag súil go mór leis an seachtain seo chugain! :)

Rob - Higher Level

I was apprehensive going into Irish, I had really being focusing on maths over the weekend and only knew a few main phrases for the essay. We had prepared an essay on córas oideachais as well as timpilleacht, and I had written out a piece on the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean a few weeks ago.I'm quite happy with how the listening went, the accents were overall easy to understand and where I didn't know a word I just wrote what I heard. On opening the page with the essay titles I couldn't believe that Córas Oideachais had turned up again as it did in the mocks. The other essay titles were also very broad and what my friends had been preparing for, táillií uisce fit in nicely to one title I remember. There was loads of choice, I think everyone was happy with what they received.As today was my only double day of exams, I'm glad its over. It feels good to be happy with a paper, especially compared to last Friday after maths. Now for Paper 2, hoping the Prós and Dánta that are expected to come up make an appearance!

Isabelle - Higher Level

After the most horrible start to the morning with Maths 2 I found this Irish paper such a treat!The listening was by far one of the easiest I have ever done (please god don’t let it affect the marking scheme!), and the essay topics were so broad that you could nearly fit anything you had prepared in! I panicked a bit when I saw córas oideachais had appeared in the debate section as I have never written a debate before but I was banking on that education system question! However it was quite a relief to have seen that in fact it wasn’t looking for a debate as such but a “píosa caint” for a radio station! Feel slightly better about probably not counting maths now!

Leah - Higher Level

Hello and welcome one and all. Wow, I must say, Irish Paper I was extremely generous! Almost too generous, some may say... Did anyone else get a sense that Paper I was a little bit too easy? Honestly, Paper I for Irish was extremely very kind.Of course, the paper began with a good old fashioned listening - which I, for one, am grateful for. It spoke at a slightly faster than moderate pace and the different accents weren't too hard to decipher. I found part C the most difficult but it wasn't all too bad at all.The Aiste titles though! Oh my god, Question B made my day. Since Fifth Year, my Irish class had a running joke that we were all too focused on the negatives in today's society. One of those negatives that we spoke about at length were alcohol and drugs. You can imagine how happy I was to see "Alcol agus Drugaí: na fadhbanna..." come up as a topic. My one problem with it though was the fact I had so much too say that I crammed it into my first few paragraphs, leaving my conclusion somewhat dry rushed.I thought that Paper was quite a nice on to get, I'm just praying Seal i Neipeal won't come up now. I suspect it will though, seen as the first paper was so broad and nice.Please note: Blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union.

Junior Certificate Maths Paper 2

Art - Higher Level

I have to say, I don't want to dwell on this in case the State Examination Commission change the marking scheme, but I was delighted with the paper! Though I must say that paper two is my favourite of the two by a long shot and I found paper one tricky, so don't panic if you disagree with me. The trigonometry questions seemed pretty straight forward, bar one or two where they weren't right angled triangles and you had to use measurements which I found strange. Both geometry and co-ordinate geometry seemed to be very doable. No theorem was needed to be proved, just mention it was a cyclic quadrilateral (proud of my spelling). The very very last part of the paper however I couldn't calculate for the life of me. It was getting the radius but in a weird fraction. Other than the odd narky part here and there I overall was really happy with how it went.Hopefully if I aced paper two it might balanced me up to a B :/ Please God...

Helen - Higher Level

I was feeling calm whilst going into this exam as I knew I had prepared all I could for it, of course I was nervous but I think that adds to the momentum of the whole day. Once I got the paper I scanned through the questions to see if there was any major bit that I needed to digest in my head before attempting it. I was surprised to see that there were no formal proofs on the paper, which I had learned off but hey it won't go to waste! The construction was quite straight forward being that we only had to bisect the shape. Overall I felt that it was a fair paper with the odd blimp of a question here and there but I was fairly happy with how it went.

Jane - Higher Level

First of all shout out to the SEC for the prettiest and loveliest paper 2 I have ever laid my eyes on. I throughly enjoyed this paper, all the questions that I wanted to come up, came up! Even the hated question where we were given a picture of a water tank, I could get my head around and I really liked it. It was so rewarding when I got my answer at the end! Everything went swimmingly, including the question on the swimming pool which was the most gorgeous area and volume question I'd seen! Hopefully though, my answers were actually right and I'm not blissfully ignorant of the fact that I hadn't read the questions properly or anything!I feel very fulfilled after finishing my junior cert Maths course. I really felt great when I opened my paper and loved the feeling of solving problems and applying the knowledge which my amazing Maths teacher had taught me. I'm really looking forward to leaving cert math! (does that sound weird...??)Please note: Blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union.

Junior Certificate Geography

Gearóid - Higher Level

I started with the short questions as I often find that they give me confidence. I didn't find these particularly hard, as they were not that different from other years.Onto the long questions, I started with question 5, the map one. I didn't find this particularly hard, nothing too difficult. I was only surprised that they asked us to draw an aerial map rather than an OS map. I went to question 4 next on Economic Activities next. I done a lot of work on these topics so I thought it was easy enough. Finishing with question 1, I understood volcanoes and earthquakes, I wrote about flood plains on the rivers section, which I should of wrote on waterfalls in my opinion. However overall I thought that this paper was not too difficult and no major surprises came up.

Helen - Higher Level

I was a bit apprehensive before the geography exam as the course is so expansive with great detail. However, I went in with an open mind! I found that the short questions were quite straight forward. I think it helps that most are multiple choice answers and an optional question here and there. The short questions featured topics such as, limestone rock and carbonation, climates, rivers, population density and features of coastal erosion. Overall I was happy with the short questions.Whilst doing my long questions, I'd thought I'd be stuck for time but fortunately I wasn't! I decided to do questions 2, 3A/B/D and 4. Question 2 was all about the atmosphere such as, relief rainfall, global warming and acid rain. Acid rain coincides with chemical weathering to a certain extent so I was able to write all about it. Question 3A was about Fold Mountains and I had to draw, label and explain the diagram. Unfortunately, I was blissfully unaware that I had written all about mid-Atlantic ridges but I'm confident that I got the next part of it correct!3B was about Population and 3D was about Traffic Congestion, so I felt that section went well. Question 4 included topics such as Farming, Tourism and Fishing. All parts were looking for either 2 reasons, measures, inputs, etc.Overall I was happy with the geography paper.

Art - Higher Level

After two endless days of major exams, in English and Irish, and a two and a half hour long maths exam in the evening, I was almost looking forward to geography... Beginning with the short questions, they seemed to be slightly more narky than usual. For example, my class hadn't covered the named river's location. There also seemed to be one or two new styles of asking questions, like with the ordnance survey early on, they printed the graph in it. Other than that they weren't too challenging. At least I hope they weren't!On to the long questions. Personally, I believe the combinations fell nicely. I answered questions 1, 2 and 3. I normally do the ordnance survey but I couldn't resist the geographical mix when I read it. They were very nice to allow us to write about any river feature in question one. What else was there; explaining fold mountains, traffic congestion, relief rainfall and a few other handy ones. Overall, I seemed very happy with it.

Jane - Higher Level

I was crazy nervous before this exam! I have a really great geography track record, and because I did very well in my pre I had kind of neglected it, that is, until five o clock on the morning of my paper! I crammed loads of information into my head (always a bad idea guys) and was ready to word vomit all of my answers I had learnt on weather, climate, and population, only to see they hadn't come up in the long questions!!! I was distraught, and opted to do Q1 Q2 and Q3. I would have done Q4 but I hadn't revised first year geography before the exam (I've always hated 1st year geography). I completely finished my exam script paper with pages and pages of descriptions, and I left my diagrams until the end, as my teacher had told me to do if you're tight on time. I ended up not doing either of the two diagrams, but I'm not worried about it as they're only worth one out of ten marks, and if you get 9/10 in every long answer question, and do well in the shorts, you'll still get your A. I found though, I was stretching myself a little when I had to write copious amounts of information on acid rain, and ended up putting a lot of my knowledge about acid rain from science in there.Hopefully my examiner will be impressed with my effort, because I really put everything into that exam!!Please note: Blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union.

Junior Certificate Maths Paper 1

Art - Higher Level

Oh where do I begin... Highly challenging paper across the board I thought. Being the first year to have studied three years of project maths, it seemed a given that we would be put on the frying pan. Beginning with the sets; they didn't seem to be overly difficult, though part ii) on page one where you had to equal two parts of it through a good few. After that, we were faced with a variety of traditional paper one topics, such as functions and factorising quadratic equations, hidden behind sneaky project maths language. A half an hour in, and me still trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the phone companies I must say I feared the worst. Fortunately as time progressed my luck picked up and I worked out as much as I could. Honestly though, I wasn't happy with it at all. I left several blanks and jotted in a couple of dumb answers to work with (because you can't be marked wrong twice).Please God paper two will go my way now. It's my preferred one to be honest. I didn't think it was possible to drop marks from the mocks!

Helen - Higher Level

You could cut the tension and nervousness in the air with a knife. The exam hall featured worriers, last minute panics and hyper attitudes of a Friday afternoon.When I opened the paper, I was quite happy with the questions. As I launched into them, I noticed that some questions were a lot more complicated than they appeared. However, I persevered and pushed through! I found the suggestive maximum time helpful as I was able to track my progress in the exam. There were a couple shaky questions but I put down something and hoped that I'd get at least some marks for attempting it. I was happy that a good bit of algebra came up as I really worked on it after the mocks. All in all, I was pretty happy with how Maths Paper 1 went.

Jane - Higher Level

Well guys, it was the one exam that I was completely dreading. The thing about math is that it either goes beautifully or dreadfully. I came out of the exam on the verge of tears, everyone was talking about how easy it was and my heart just sank. It took me until Sunday evening to sit up and say.. wait... it wasn't even that bad. I think a huge flaw in a student's mindset as they come out of an exam is that if everything didn't go exactly as planned, they did badly in the paper. Things didn't go exactly as planned, I'll tell you that! There were questions on that paper that I could only attempt, and had to squeeze my eyes shut as I dismissed the fact that I had got the wrong answer, and turned the page onto the next question. It nearly killed me!!!After a massive conversation with my friend who loved paper one, and after comparing some of our methods and answers on Sunday, I hopped into bed and didn't look at a book until opening paper 2 at 9:30 the next morning.Please note: Blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union.

Leaving Certificate Maths Paper 1

Lorraine - Ordinary Level

Hi all,I hope that your all as outraged as me right now..what on earth was that? Did they accidentally give us the honours maths paper because that was next to impossible!!I woke up to revise the itty bits that really niggle me in paper 1 but generally paper 1 is my okish paper whereas its paper 2 that Is my downfall! I spent a long time on complex numbers and going through the financial maths because they were a long question in the mocks.When I went into school everyone was feeling ok- a lot of revising going on!! When the examiner handed me the exam paper I started to scan through it making myself not rush into anything-my worst habit. I checked through the long questions and was really disappointed- no financial maths. I started back at the first question which was exchange rates- not my best question! The complex numbers question was like a different language - they brought cos into it!! I fought with myself in the exam not to panic or freak out but jesus Christ that was a horrible exam.After the exam from talking to everybody else, nobody seems to be happy with it! Some of the questions were just strange and some of them I had never seen on the sample papers never mind past papers!! I have to admit I am really disappointed and extremely worried now as paper 2 is my awful paper! At least I have the weekend to spend cramming on it and trying to get a half decent result!!

Leah - Ordinary Level

Out of all of the exams I've done so far, I was absolutely chuffed to pieces with the Paper! As soon as I opened Maths Paper I today, I could hardly contain my glee. The Paper opened with an easy enough questions about financial maths, like currency conversions and so on and - boy! I may be one of the few people to admit that I actually liked Maths.When I dropped to Ordinary Level Maths after Christmas of Fifth Year, I felt full of worry that I would get a horrible Paper in the Leaving - simply because I didn't know what to expect from the terrifying "Project Maths". However, I believe that this years Paper is the nicest one I've seen yet, including the Sample Papers that came in Examit's set of Past Exam Papers.In fairness though, I heard off many of my friends that they hated Question Eight and Nine and I have to agree but always remember; attempt marks are key! Attempt marks will be and are my blessing. With attempt marks alone you can pass Maths, which is nice considering the fact that it's either a subject you get or not at all. It just goes to show: everybody loves a trier.The only other question that stumped me was the second question to do with Co-Ordinate Geometry but I guess no one can be good at everything.Honestly, roll on Maths Paper II because I am feeling ecstatic. I'm as happy as Larry with what came up and I hope that the next people will be just as sweet! :)

Neil - Ordinary Level

After talking to many others, the general consensus seems to be that ordinary maths paper 1 was very difficult for an ordinary maths paper. I particularly found the question on sequences very difficult and honestly I thought oil barons earned more money lolOverall though, I think it was a very easy paper to pass as the question As were very simple and straight forward yet it was a hard paper to get an A1 in due to the Cs being challenging. Gods speed for paper 2 to all my fellow ordinary huns.

Shauna - Ordinary Level

Going into maths I wasn't too worried because I'm in pass and probably won't count it for points! I didn't study for it much last night as I had Honours Geography this morning and was stressed to the max about that! I went in just hoping for some nice questions though! Question 1 was about money exchange so that was grand! It all went down hill from there :(( I found the questions in the middle of the paper IMPOSSIBLE!!! I spent so long trying to figure out what I was being asked to do! The last 2 questions were do-able, although the very last part of the last question wasn't worded very well. I came out of the exam fairly depressed because I thought I would do well in maths, but found out that everyone found the paper soooo difficult so hopefully it'll be marked easy enough! LIVING FOR ATTEMPT MARKS !

Joanna - Higher Level

Ah, when I opened the paper and saw that there was no sign of DeMoivre's theorem or proof by induction, it felt like my prayers were answered! I was dreading seeing them, I spent the whole dull morning looking over them and trying to drill the steps into my head, without much progress. The fact that they weren't there was a massive relief and I felt ready to tackle anything else that may be on the paper.Looking over the questions, they looked challenging but didn't make me panic, and I found the first two questions were really manageable which helped me to stay calm (I even managed to get an answer in surd form for question two as was asked, so I was delighted!) the whole paper wasn't easy, I particularly struggled in finishing the last 3 questions. However, I put something down for every question which I was happy about. There were a few situations where I knew the figures that I got in a previous part of a question were wrong, but I knew what to do with them in the parts that followed. So hopefully, even though a lot of my final answers were a mess, the steps that I followed and the formula I used were correct and will give me enough marks to pass this paper.So, I hope I have a good few partial grades in the bag now, paper one was always my least favourite paper, so whatever I achieved should only get better after paper two! I'm really relieved because I knew this would be one of the most challenging exams and the fact that it went okay is really encouraging. Time to go over paper 2, as many biology exam questions as possible and make my way through Irish essays, summaries and vocab for the exams next week... But first, I'm taking the afternoon off and recommend it to everyone else after today :))

Isabelle - Higher Level

Today was definitely the most nervous I have been going into an exam. In the car on the way I wasnt sure whether I needed to cry or throw up (thankfully I did neither). Having got 40% on the dot in my mock Maths has been a huge source of stress for me, with my main end goal being to scrape a D3. This exam was baffling to me. Some of the questions were scarily easy and almost spoon fed the answers and then others (like the oil spill ???!) were difficult and just plain weird. Differentiation has never been one of my strong points, so when I saw that nearly every question included it in some shape or form (seriously though whats up with that??) I was quite disappointed. The financial maths question was a nice break from it all!Overall I was not overly happy with the paper, and I have pretty mixed emotions from most of my friends aswell, some thinking it was too easy, some finding it impossible. Either way I filled in every box and made some ludicrous attempts, so I'm hoping some nice partial credits will be heading my way and hopefully getting me to 40%.Now for a weekend full of the most intense cramming of my life, but maybe a well deserved break for tonight!

Dáire - Higher Level

I was more anxious before this exam than I was for English, but I was relieved when I opened the paper. I found the short questions to be very handy, especially the financial maths one, which I found nearly too easy and was searching for the catch involved. I was happy with that, because it's my worst topic.I took my time going through the paper, it took me a few minutes to relax with the paper and once I did, it was all good from there. Usually I would go mad if there was a question I couldn't answer, but I felt that time was on my side and I pulled each question apart and got through it.It wasn't a perfect paper either, there were surprisingly only a couple of parts that I could not answer. I'll hold off on predicting my grade for now but I'm nearly certain I passed off that paper alone. I hope paper two treats me as well on Monday as paper one did today.

Rob - Higher Level

I had prepared a lot on proof by induction as well as learning off my proofs and definitions for this paper. All morning I looked over these, and so I was quite disappointed to see none of them turn up in the paper.As I don't have the paper with me to analyse I can't speak about every question. I found the first 6 to be quite straightforward, except for Question 4 involving complex numbers. I tried everything with this question, swapping positions, De Moivres, adding conjugates. I couldn;t make it work.I found the rate of change question to be challenging, there was a lot of information with the different questions requiring you to fully be following what was going on with that oil spill.I was disappointed to see no theory, no induction or simultaneous equations nor any mention of surjective and injective functions. The paper was very heavy on calculus, which I can deal with, but I would have preferred some of the other topics.Overall I'm a little disappointed and disheartened. There will surely be some theory on Paper 2 now, on top of the theorems and inferential statistics to learn off. I'm still not sure about the new aspects introduced this year so will have to check up on that tonight online.Hopefully Paper 2 will be a bit kinder to me, I know not everyone was as disappointed as I was today. 8 more exams to go!Please note: Blog posts reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union.