Students sitting the Leaving Certificate Economics Higher Level paper would have needed independent knowledge beyond what was in the textbooks, according to teacher Ray O’Loughlin.

Mr O’Loughlin of the Institute of Education, Dublin, said it continued a trend seen last year.

He described the paper, overall, as ”fair and balanced” and said Section A was particularly student friendly.

“There was one nice, topical question on the impact and methods of dealing with flooding,” he said.

In relation to Section B, he said students who concentrated on micro economics would have found it more to their liking.

He said the macro questions , 5-8, were more testing, with the appearance of three challenging topics - economic policies to address in Ireland; actions taken by the government to protect the environment; the economic consequences of Ireland’s population being urbanised.

“All three were very geographical, broad, non- textbook questions. They would be more suited to third level standard and have limited relevance to what second level economics students study, “ said Mr O’Loughlin.

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