Reaction to 2025 Leaving Certificate Economics (Higher Level) by Rob Quinlan, Economics teacher at The Institute of Education.
- Students who read the news in the first half of the year will recognise the key topic areas.
- A broad scope of material meant that no chapter could be missed.
A great Economics paper isn’t a test of rote learning, but a test of understanding how material relates to the world. Students who were alert to the unfolding events and economic discussions happening beyond the classroom will find that every chapter has real context, a real place in people’s lives. This paper was extremely topical, drawing upon issues with GP numbers, Pension Auto-Enrolment, Hospitality closures and even some international trade.
Section A was short questions that skewed slightly towards micro-economics. This will have favoured students who find the material more conducive to quick, direct answers. The questions incorporated staple concepts like cost benefit analysis into Germany’s hosting of the Euro 2024 tournament. Later, the appearance of perennial talking points like inflation and the minimum wage will be seen as comfortable banker topics for students familiar with past papers. The only really tricky twist in this section occurs in Question Eight (B) which asks about “greenwashing” and market failure. While the concepts are not themselves hard the layout of the question was essentially a reverse-engineered version of the typical approach where students need to state the definitions. This will push those looking for the highest grades to sit back and reconfigure their approaches. This was followed by two lovely questions: one on the predicted topic of oligopoly, the other on trade cycles. The latter’s integration of boom and recession will be very comfortable for students and so they should be delighted as they leave this section.
The longer questions of Section B were all rooted in important new topics but required a really broad knowledge of the course. If you had hoped to get away with only learning a select few chapters, you’ll have found the scope of this paper tough. Q11 on health insurance and health care provision was a perfect balance of topics and scales that tested students grasp of the full spectrum of factors at play in this pressing issue. Q12 on GDP and GNI was interesting in its emphasis on the latter as it was a good way to show the influence of multinationals on Ireland’s economy. GNI also appears in Q13 in the context of international aid and the Official Development Fund (ODA). Q14’s tech focus not only reflected key news stories (e.g. Amazon’s expansion) but tasked students with considering more novel areas like Ireland’s market economy in Agriculture and Sports. This was paired with fairly standard questions on supply and demand, as well a s a gig economy that was similar to 2021.
Q15 on housing prices and mortgage relief will surely be familiar from discussions both in and out of the classroom. Again, this was a great balance of material with the final question on capital expenditure being particularly interesting. Q16 was equally engaged with the broader context with its inclusion of hospitality sector closures. Again, this shows that a student looking to really succeed in the exams needs to keep an eye on what happening in the world around them as that is as good an indicator of what to expect as past papers.
Overall, this was a great paper for those who really grasped how important Economics is their lives in the country and the world on the whole.