Leaving Certificate 2025: English Paper 1

It’s all started, and as usual it’s started with Paper 1 in English, a relatively ‘friendly’ way into the Leaving Certificate exams. This is the paper which may be most affected by reforms in English, which we have recently learnt will be delayed by a year - so, starting in Fifth Year in September 2027. That means that whatever replaces the main composition (possibly the most ‘enjoyable’ part of the two papers) will be completed by Christmas 2028. Little has allayed concerns that this (and the teaching of it) will be corrupted by AI.

And so to this year. Comments on Higher Level, since all our candidates take that. Here’s the paper.

The general theme was ‘Perspectives’ (I don’t know that any theme ever really matters to any candidate). Text 1 was by David Robson on ‘The Underdog Effect’ (adapted from this article), which had plenty of interesting material. The B question on that text followed on from this, asking candidates to give a captain’s talk to a team facing a superior opponent: this would be popular, I imagine.

Margaret Atwood was the writer of Text 2, The Perspective of a ‘Wise Old Counsellor’ (the second text mentioning Donald Trump - you can’t get away from him), an enjoyable speech from the One Young World Congress in 2024, which you can watch below. Again, I liked the Question B option - a hotel manager responding to a negative online review, another fresher option than has been the case recently.

The third text also came from 2024, edited extracts from Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning short novel Orbital, which I was slightly surprised last autumn to see winning that award. This was the most challenging of the three comprehension texts. The B option was a podcast reflection on changing your perspective based on an experience/encounter, certainly moving into Main Composition territory. The podcast was called Eyes Wide Open, uncomfortably close to Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 erotic film Eyes Wide Shut.

All the comprehension questions on these texts followed the now familiar pattern, the third instance in each case being on style.

The main Composition options also followed the typical pattern: two personal essays (one on disappointments and their impact - I imagine a lot will have tackled this; the second on voting intentions in future elections - far less popular, surely), a discursive essay (on printed/digital photographs - quite niche), two short stories (on a ‘plucky chance’ challenging a privileged/established opponent, and an ambitious character whose reckless actions lead to disaster - such very defined rubrics hardly encourage this option), and a speech on the valueless currency that is Truth nowadays (lots of material there for candidates).

So, as has often been the case in recent years, plenty of accessible material for candidates, and nothing that should have tripped them up.

Comments on Paper 2.