Reaction to 2025 Leaving Certificate Physical Education (Higher Level) by Brian Gregan, Physical Education teacher at The Institute of Education.
- The emphasis on popular topics will make students happy
- The paper had lots of choice, with even more internal choice than previous years
Entering into this exam students will have already completed two projects and have 50% of their grade locked in. This final push will see students racing through some sections only to be faced with more daunting long answers that will keep them writing until the final second.
Students should fly through Section A’s short questions. There were a great range of ideas but with a slight emphasis on Topic 5 (Promoting Physical Activity). While not always a popular topic, the questions were clear and to the point meaning that few will struggle to have something to say. Topic 5 synthesises well with Topic 7 (Inclusivity) which was a prescribed topic for this paper, so everyone should be prepared for these ideas. Questions on coaching will be popular with those who are up to speed on their Principles of Training and ever-popular topic of doping appeared twice. Tricker topics like vectors and scalers were absent or while others like stereotyping were avoidable through lots of internal choice. As result students should feel good as they complete this section.
Section B’s compulsory case study will have ground some this momentum to a halt. The text was denser, and students needed to pay attention to every aspect of the pages to ensure they had the correct material. You couldn’t simply skim the text on move on, the details really mattered. As a result, some will feel that time ebbed away in this section. Overall, the case study on Throwing was a good mixture of Topics 1, 2, 5 and 6 – all of which will be familiar but the fact there was little choice meant that they really needed to know their stuff. Skipping sections wasn’t an option.
Section C’s long questions reiterated the previous two sections’ relationship in miniature: a swift start that loses speed in longer essay questions. PE isn’t like other subjects that are heavily essay based, but long questions do demand the students cover a good amount of material in order to safeguard against any ambiguity in the marking scheme. In terms of the material, there was nothing unexpected here: components of fitness, principles of training etc. would all have been banker topics heading into the exam. All the options here were viable, but Q15 was a great balance of principles of training, ethics and coaching that will draw many people in. Ultimately the challenge of these questions wasn’t the topic but the often-daunting textboxes for the part (d)s.
This was a fair paper, but students will find themselves in sprint to the finish to fill everything in.