After widespread student consternation about the Leaving Cert pass maths test, some experts have said that the higher maths paper 1 was “the easiest on record.”
Dr. Eugene Gath, who has Ph.D. in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been lecturing in mathematics and financial mathematics in the University of Limerick, has analyzed the higher paper and has said that, if you stripped away the applications, what is left is level with the ordinary papers of past years.
According to him, knowledge of actual mathematics at a high level has all but plummeted in recent times, due to the syllabus being used and the lack of quality on the paper.
Always according to Mr. Gath, Project Maths exams have been in use for a number of years. Most questions laid out on the exams are in the context of an application, which generally tends to make them unnecessarily verbose. In his experience, such questions are disadvantageous to students whose native language may not be English, for instance.
In his expert opinion, the higher level paper starkly contrasted in its ease with the overly complex nature of the pass paper.
Many students referred to the pass paper as a “disaster”, with some going as far as saying that it may have ruined their aspirations to go onto third level education.