Junior Cert/Technical Graphics: This year's Junior Cert technical graphics paper was regarded as difficult by students and teachers.
The higher-level paper provided good variety on the short answer questions, but overall the paper was very demanding, they say. Mr Conor Gill, technical graphics teacher, Old Bawn Community School, Tallaght, said: "It's always a demanding paper for a 14- or 15-year-old, but there were no huge surprises."
One student, David Buckley, of Castlecomer Community School, said: "There wasn't really enough time to get it finished. The questions that I had prepared were easy to get through, but I didn't want to be rushing it. There's just not enough time."
Time was also the biggest constraint for the ordinary-level paper. It was described as "do-able and quite reasonable". The paper was similar to other years and overall students were happy with the exam.