Mark Allocation in Leaving Cert 2014 – make sure you have a clear Time Management strategy

We can see from today’s Leaving Cert papers that the State Exams Commission decided to allocate marks in amounts of 25, 35, 40, 50, 60 and 75 (that’s six different values).

In recent years, they had limited themselves to values of 25, 50 and 75, which made time management reasonably simple.

We believe they are now overcomplicating the mark allocation, but unfortunately they are likely to do something similar on Monday for Paper 2.

So – what to do? Well the first thing is – don’t worry!!
We recommend that you manage your time by the following simple rule of thumb:
divide the marks allocated to the question by 2, and subtract 2.

So, for a 40 mark question, you would allow around 18 minutes, and so on.

We’ve now updated our Exam Technique booklet to reflect this latest development and if you need more practice take look at our past exam papers.

NOTE: this does not impact Junior Cert as the recommended times are printed on each question on the paper.

Please SHARE this with anyone sitting Paper 2 for Leaving Cert on Monday, it could really help them. Thank you.