Reaction to 2026 Leaving Certificate Chemistry (Higher Level) by Tara Lyons, Chemistry teacher at The Institute of Education.
This is the final examination of the current Chemistry course and SEC has chosen to shun any fanfare, hoorah or shocks to stay true to trends of previous years.
The exam has eleven questions from which students needed to choose their preferred eight. While this technically means that they could avoid the initial trio of experiments, many will jump straight in to Q1 on water crystallisation. This experiment hasn’t been examined since 2020, so those who were monitoring patterns in the past papers will have had a sense it might make an appearance. Q2 was a conglomeration of three different Organic Chemistry experiments. Students often have a love/hate relationship to Organic Chemistry, due in no small part to the large quantity of the course it occupies. This means that sometimes they hedge their bets on what experiment will come up to cut down on revision, but that didn’t work here. Q3 on ions in water will also be very familiar but interestingly also includes a calculation. Typically only two of the three would involve stoichiometry, but all of them did. This often helps distinguish the topic scorers from everyone else as it requires a different set of skills. Much of the course can be revised through recitation but those who want that H1 will need to demonstrate a higher order approach to the material and the question setter seems to have built that into this selection of experiments.
Q4 is an array of short questions with a heavy emphasis on Atomic Theory and Organic Chemistry, which is very conventional. Indeed the majority of the following questions were reminiscent of past papers such that those who were well practiced will recognise over 90% of what was presented here. Naturally there were a few inventive variations to challenge them to apply their knowledge more diagnostically. An example of this is Q5 (c) which asks whether an element is an oxidising or reducing agent, and to justify your response. This can’t be tackled by simply searching your memory banks and so tests the students understanding of the concepts involved.
Q6 was a really nice Fuels and Rates of Reaction question while Q7 was a very manageable full question on Chemical Equilibrium. Q8 saw yet more Organic Chemistry, as was a motif of this paper. While such an emphasis might seem excessive from the outside, students will be familiar with this as it has been present on all the papers recently. Q9 on Rates of Reaction was 50% graph work, 50% theory. Rates of Reaction was part of the experiments for the last 2 years and so students will have expected to see it make an appearance here. Closing out the exam, Q10 and Q11 offer internal choice and yet again Atomic Theory and Organic Chemistry appear.
Overall, a student who had spent the time to study their past papers will be pleased with this paper as the valuable insights gained there had a tangible impact in this exam. For the student seeking a H1, there were enough opportunities to display skills beyond rote learning that will help them distinguish themselves from the crowd.