Reaction to 2025 Leaving Certificate Agricultural Science (Higher Level) by Catriona Hendry, Agricultural Science teacher at The Institute of Education.
- Some curveballs in format but lots of viable choice
Every Ag. Science paper needs a pause and breath in order to fully tackle it. Over the previous years, questions often looked harder than they were just beneath the surface, and that trend continues here – this time with a few novel twists that students will not have anticipated. There were some notable omissions – no diagrams (outside of experiments) and no long question on the nitty gritty of specific crops. But what will have most likely set some off-balance is the format of some questions.
The short questions had lots of viable choices, so students could navigate through the options to success. Some were straightforward in that you either knew it or you didn’t, with little room for in the moment extrapolation or reasoning, e.g. the question on Blackleg and Q6 on identifying farming implements, the latter of which would greatly favour those with practical experience. Of this section, Q8 and Q12 stand out as deviations from the standards of previous years. Q8 was a nice question on the nitrogen cycle but rather than a series of incremental questions allowing you to chip away at the topic, students were present with a full-page answer box. This is much more typical for a long question, and some will be very surprised to see it in this section. Empty space means that answers have a greater risk of missing the mark, and students will likely feel unsure about how much they should have written. Q12 was normal in its structure but odd in the span of the material examined. Students will have been accustomed to short questions sticking to a topic each, but Q12 drew from all the corners of the course.
In the long questions students would have turned the page and been greeted by a very tricky animal enterprise question on beef and dairy. Reproductive efficiency, replacements rates and “milk record” may all have been positioned just outside of students’ comfort zones, and I suspect many will quickly scan the page and decline to tackle this question. But that is one of the key approaches for success in Ag. Science: keep moving, don’t get stuck. Q14 was a welcome return of S.P.A. (Specified Practical Activities) that were underrepresented last year. This examined their grasp of a soil experiment plucked right from the course; so many will be happy with that. Q15 on genetics was another ‘full box’ question followed by a rather tough plant identification question.
Q16 was an old friend/enemy: food conversion ratios. While it is not always popular, it will be familiar to those who have worked through past papers. The later parts of this question had a novel and contemporary twist as students were asked to critically assess an A.I. summary. This was an interesting way to apply the strength of their studies in the context of increasingly popular digital tools. A fun synthesis of a cautionary tale and academic assessment. The final question on the paper was a graphing question that was reminiscent of aspects of their projects but had never been asked in this way before. Extrapolating or extending graphs are familiar territory, but this was graphing from scratch. A very approachable task but not one that fell within anyone’s expectations for the exam.
Overall, this was a good exam and nearly every curveball is balanced with something nicely workable.