Reaction to 2026 Leaving Certificate Classical Studies (Higher Level) by Tadgh MacHugh, Classical Studies teacher at The Institute of Education.
Overview: A more straightforward paper this year with a fairer section A than last year. Section A had a broad range of questions with a good gradient of difficulty. However, there was some slightly tricky wording of questions in section A that may have caught some students out. Section B was very fair overall, again with a broad range of questions that most students should have found appealing. Questions 15 and 16 may have caused some difficulties for students who might not have been as familiar with architecture or who were unsure how to approach long form essay style architecture questions.
Section A: a fair mix of questions that took a broader look at the course content this year over previous years. The wording of the questions in this section was accessible and allowed students to maximise their marks, provided they addressed all part of the question. The questions also allowed students to focus on singular aspects/topics which would have helped with exam timing.
One area that students might struggle in this section is the slightly more niche areas examined in some parts of questions like Q 6 (C). However, due to the construction of the question students could potentially still achieve high markes even if they did not fully address all aspects of this question.
Section B:
Question 11 (a) A single 40 mark question this year that was straightforward and gave students the opportunity to give varied answers and still achieve high marks.
One area that might have caught Students out is mistakenly only dealing with one character, missing the plural “s” in the question which implies that they would need to deal with at least 2 characters here.
Question 11 b (I), (ii), (iii)
Three very accessible questions here. It is great to see the return of the “and/or” language to questions here that give students greater autonomy in how they approach questions. Students who were very familiar with the Odyssey and the Aeneid should have done well here.
Question 12-16
A broad range of topics from across strands of the were examined in this section, providing students with great variety of course content to choose from. The wording of the questions was clear with nothing that could catch students out.
Two questions that students might have been surprised to see were Q15 and Q16 that both deal with aspects of the Architecture section of the course. Some students may have found these questions difficult in terms of length and level of detail as, to date, long answer essay questions on architecture have not been asked in this section of the exam.