Reaction to 2026 Leaving Certificate Biology (Higher Level) by Róisín Doyle, Biology teacher at The Institute of Education.
- A paper that will have ignited their nervous systems.
- Niche topics were drawn from the full breadth of the syllabus.
This exam will have really challenged students as the question setter has deliberately reached for the more niche material not seen on previous papers. It demanded that students have a command of the full course in all three of sections of the exam.
Section A’s short questions are normally the gentle introduction to the exam that helps students get warmed up. Questions 1, 2 and 3 will have served this function nicely but the level of challenge increases more suddenly than most will be comfortable with. Every question from Q4 to Q7 will pose a considerable challenge as niche elements of the course appear. With such a big syllabus students often try to narrow their focus in the hope of getting lucky with their selected topics, but this paper seemed designed to test every aspect. In particular a topic like plants which students often try to leave out was a repeated feature of the paper. This all means that their nervous systems will have ignited as a fight or flight flutter set the tone for the afternoon.
For those that settled into fight mode, Section B would have been more familiar and more traditional in approach. Question 8 examined all 7 experiments which continued that theme of breadth, but many will have seen this type of question before. It wouldn’t have been preferred but it wasn’t truly novel. Q9 and Q10’s styles were almost identical to previous years. Many will have been happy with the enzymes in the former but challenged by the effect of I.A.A. on plant tissue in the latter. Coming out of this section students should have felt a bit more secure but the anxious adrenaline rush from the previous section will have had a psychological impact.
Section C starts with a more comfortable collection of questions: photosynthesis, respiration, and yet more plant biology. Interestingly this section was much more language heavy with both a lack of graphs and atypically phrased questions. This could be a more subtle choice like enquiring about “naturalists” rather than “scientists” in the evolution question to the obscuring in Q16 (c). Parts (a), (b) and (d) were okay, but for the third stage a more conceptual topic mixed with uncomfortably phrased questions will have them puzzling what exactly the examiner is looking for. Question 15 on Human Reproduction will be a topic that many will have anticipated, but the given questions were niche so even this will feel like a calibrated win.
The Biology exam isn’t a race against the clock, but students will feel tired and embattled leaving the exam hall. There were several places where they will have found quite nice questions but that was not the dominant narrative of the paper.