Leaving Certificate 2025: English Paper 2

My comments on Paper 1.

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And so to Paper 2, Literature. Again, comments are on Higher Level, since all our candidates take that. Overall, this was a demanding test for everyone: 3 hours 20 minutes of intense writing with question styles which are often strained and contorted. It won’t happen, but ‘reform’ should involve breaking the exam into two more manageable time slots, and a reassessment of question-phrasing.

The Single Text Shakespeare option on King Lear featured as the first choice a word which may have made candidates pause, referring to the ‘duality’ of some characters, who might be seen as ‘both victims and persecutors’. The word was fair enough, though, being explained in the subsequent phrase. My main concern would have been with the word ‘persecutors’, a fairly crude and imprecise term for most of the characters one might want to write about. The second option was more straightforward, referring to the world of justice and order, ideas we explicitly looked at in class. By the way, they’re big into ‘insights’ these days, especially ‘fascinating’ ones (that word is used five times in the ten Single Text questions).

The six comparative options provided plenty of choice and opportunity. As in recent post-pandemic years, the 70-mark option allowed candidates to answer on just two texts (we advise ours to make the most of the comparative opportunities of three). In the reformed Leaving Certificate, it is looking like this will be a thinned down module and examined orally (practically, this will mean thinner assessment too). The most interesting question to me seemed to be C1, on how over-influential a climax might be.

And so to the prescribed poetry selection, which always prompts most reaction: Boland, Kavanagh, Eliot, Mahon, Smith (her first appearance). The wording often feels tired and strained these days, though the Mahon question would have been startling to candidates: how would his poetry be enhanced by being read aloud? I would have given that a wide berth. A lot of candidates were hoping for Boland to turn up: I hope they coped with the idea that her poetry explores ‘the complex nature of powerlessness’ (hmm).

The Unseen poem was by an Irish writer, Pat Boran (see some of his poetry films). ‘As Far As Turn Back’ is set on a walk on a ‘lockdown day’; this cohort of 18 year olds five years ago were out of school during the pandemic. The final four lines are poignant, and could indeed have been a thought-provoking prompt in Paper 1 as the candidates leave secondary school behind:

And who knew that not knowing

where that turn would turn out to be

would turn out to be

the thing we’d miss the most.