Science teachers have expressed satisfaction with the grades given this year in physics and chemistry, two subjects which have suffered from sharp declines in numbers over the last decade.
The failure rates in higher level physics were down from 9.3 per cent to 7.7 per cent, while the chemistry rate fell to 7.9 from 8.1 per cent. The failure rates for the pass papers were also down, particularly in chemistry, dropping from 13.6 per cent to 6.8 per cent.
Mr Seamus O Miochain, the physics representative of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI) said there had been an attempt to make the subject "more user-friendly" for students. The decline in the failure rate had occurred because the language used in the papers had been simplified.
He said the great advantage of the subject was that if a student knew the material he or she could score strongly because there was not much subjectivity in the answers. He hoped the slight upturn in the number of honours at higher level would encourage more people into physics.
He said next year a new physics course would come in which would concentrate on how science interacted with society. This should broaden the subject's appeal. However, the decline in numbers, which took place again this year when they were down to 5,850 from 6,257 at higher level, was a constant worry.
"In the media and elsewhere physicists and chemists tend to be seen as the bad guys whereas people involved in areas like biology are seen as the good guys. Consequently, a lot of young people who are interested in the environment tend to choose biology," he said.
The ASTI's chemistry representative, Mr Gerard O'Donoghue, said the minor improvements in chemistry marks were because this year's papers were "student-friendly". The Department's chief examiners had made an effort to make the paper "less mathematical and more scientific".
He said in previous years large masses of text were presented to students and they were asked to extract a small number of answers and ignore the rest.
This approach had militated against students scoring highly. He said contrary to the image of chemistry as an impossible subject, the rate of A1s and A2s this year was 19.8 per cent, one of the highest rates in the exam.