LEAVING CERT ACCOUNTING:THERE WAS a mixed response from teachers to yesterday's accounting exam, with some teachers describing the paper as "challenging" and others stating that it was "unfair in parts."
Áine Ní Chéidigh, subject representative with the ASTI, said students would have been thrown by certain sections of the Higher Level paper.
“Questions 8 and 9 – of which students must answer one – both came up last year and would not have been expected on this year’s exam,” she said. “Even though they were on the course, students normally revise based on previous year’s patterns.”
Question 8 was also criticised for being too long, with students required to answer three parts instead of the usual two. Maureen Shanahan, a teacher at ChristKing Secondary School in Cork, said that it was a difficult question for students to complete in 35 minutes.
“Apart from this question, the paper was testing but manageable for students who were well prepared,” she added.
Arthur Russell, an accounting teacher at the Institute of Education, said the paper was challenging but manageable for students who had covered the syllabus.
“The accounting syllabus is not particularly broad and this years’ exam covered many of the required topics. This was not an exam for those taking short cuts.”
One student said: “The paper was okay, it was not brilliant. There were one or two things that threw me, but not too many major shocks.”
Peter Quinn, a teacher at St. Flannans College, Ennis, Co Clare, said that questions 2, 3 and 4 were “generous and very doable for most students.”
Question 5, which tackled depreciation accounts, may have been unexpected, while question 6, on service firms, was “very approachable.”
The ordinary level paper was well received and described as very fair and manageable for all students.
In total 5,171 candidates were entered for yesterday’s Higher Level Accounting examination in 514 schools nationwide, with 1,487 students sitting the Ordinary Level Paper.
The accounting paper is generally regarded as one of the longer and more demanding exams in the Leaving Cert schedule.