Reaction to Leaving Certificate 2026 Maths Paper 1 (O) by Jean Kelly, Maths teacher at The Institute of Education.
The goal of the Maths course has been to develop students who can use Maths to investigate, model, interpret, communicate and make decisions about real world situations rather than simply perform mathematical procedures. This Paper reflected that ambition to a tee.
Students who were confident in their mathematical abilities towards the start of their second level education but struggled with the gear shift into the more abstract Senior Cycle material will have found themselves in a comfortable and assured position. The paper didn’t test how quickly students could run through the steps but rather what interpretation and methodologies they would take. It was an exam where they needed to stop and think before putting their pen to the page. It wasn’t a test of speed but of understanding.
In Section A students will have had no issue finding their preferred 5 questions. There were a few little tricky diagrams without numbers that might through a more anxious student but they are few and far between. The exam setter, aware of a new course on the horizon, has cast their eyes back to the early days of Project Maths to draw upon samples and questions that have rarely appeared in a June examination. Students will be pleased to find that this paper was an accessibility incremental extension of Junior Cycle material.
Section B: Contexts and Applications sees the exam interact with the real world even more. In a range covering bus timetables, Income Tax, advertising and sales, and training for a marathon, students will be able to see how the skills practiced in the classroom can be applied to everyday life. There were a few twists on previous questions such as being given the net annual tax and having to work backwards to get the gross annual income, which is an inversion on some questions they would have seen on past papers. However the examiner is clearly drawing from samples papers and questions that haven’t been asked with an eye on towards the looming reforms