Chapter 1: What is the focus of the Study Hub 2026 series?
Now, the Leaving Cert is less than four weeks away and we are focusing on the exam, one subject at a time for Study Hub 2026. Today, I'm joined by Louise Boylan, who teaches Maths, Applied Maths and Physics at the Institute of Education in Dublin and has been a maths educator for over 20 years. Louise, you're very welcome. Thanks for coming in.
Thank you very much for having me, David.
OK, just a really, really general question first. How do you study maths?
You don't study maths, David, you practice maths. OK, I say to my students, it's like learning the piano. You just have to practice, practice, practice, practice, and you just do as many questions as you can. a variety of questions. Ideally, make sure you've got solutions. So you'll have students at this stage of the year and they've done every question in their textbook, every exam paper.
They'd be asking their teachers for more mock papers and they just need to keep practising. But now they can use AI, which, you know, the big bad AI.
Oh, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa.
They can use AI. I know, I know, how dare I? But it's a really good use for this. So they can put in a couple of old, say, trigonometry questions and ask whatever AI tool they're using, please make similar questions with different numbers and the solutions. So there's literally, they will literally never run out of maths questions to practice.
They can also go back and practice questions they've done before. You know, I say to them, it's not an Agatha Christie, it's not a murder mystery. If you know the answer is 10, it doesn't matter. Can you do it again?
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Chapter 2: How should students effectively study maths for the Leaving Cert?
Can you get the same answer without checking back your notes?
You probably will disagree with this, but some people say that maths, particularly honours maths, takes up a huge amount of time for people in terms of their studying, which is, I suppose, partly why there's the extra points in the CAO.
There are the extra points there. I call them compensation points in some ways. But, you know, it's very individual for students. I've had students who get a H1 in every exam and they really don't study that much. Maths is a bit like that. It's a bit like being good at art or being good at music. Some people just have it. If you do have to work hard at it, it does take up a lot of time.
It definitely does. Yeah. And plus, there's not a whole lot of learning in it. It is all practice and knowing what to do, not learning and reciting facts.
OK, so because it's about maths, it's very important to be clued in on your time management. It's very, very important to be clued in on the marking structure for the papers. But just on a very basic level, what is on each paper?
Right. So on paper one, we have a lot of algebra. We've got calculus, complex numbers, patterns, sequences, series, something called induction. Paper two is a lot more visual as geometry, trigonometry, probabilities, statistics. It's really important, though, that while that's kind of the agreed topics or the standard topics.
topics can drift so it's important when students come out of their paper one that they don't go that's it I never have to do calculus again they can walk into paper two and there'll be a little bit of calculus there which is not too bad because you've studied it all for the Friday but it's worse if it happens the other way like a year or two ago there was a probability question on paper one and that really threw students because they weren't expecting probability until after the weekend
And it is split across a weekend for the maths. But in terms of timing, the exam paper is in two halves.
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Chapter 3: What role does AI play in maths practice for students?
It's not got multiple sections like others. It's just both of them of the same structure. So we've section A is worth half of the marks and they've to answer five questions out of six. And they are what we call the short questions. They're not very short, though. They're usually about two, eight, four pages each. I would suggest to the students take about 12 minutes for each of those.
So that's five twelves. That's one hour. Your paper two then. is three questions, three long questions. They're worth 50 marks each. And I would say take 20 minutes for each of those. That's another hour. And that gives you an hour left over to read it at the start, check at the end, go back and do a thing that you couldn't do.
What's really important for students, though, is to not get bogged down in a question. If they're working away and they're getting stuck and it's going on too long and they're not getting the answer, just leave it, walk away. Because the marks tend to be for the starts of the questions, not the hard bits at the end.
OK, and the really important thing is to at least try to answer every question.
Hugely important.
There's no marks or blanks.
No marks or blanks. And sometimes, you know, if a question is overpitched and they have done it in the past and it's overpitched and students read it and they panic and they do nothing. When they look at the marking scheme after the fact, they'd be kicking themselves because there'd be things like if you wrote down a relevant formula, you might get marks.
If you wrote down the formula and put numbers in, you might get marks. If you acknowledge what the variables are in the question, so say it's about volume of a cone. So if you wrote down radius equals, height equals, and this is the formula, put the numbers in, you could well be on half of the marks there.
So it's really important that they read the question, write down the information that they have, write down what they're looking for, And then if they can progress from there, then they're really going to achieve quite well.
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Chapter 4: What topics are covered in Paper One of the maths exam?
OK, so study everything. Yes. Answer everything. Yes. And give yourself time at the end of the exam to go back over and check.
That's it, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And just... Take a chance. You know, some students are very reluctant if they look at a question and they panic and they would rather do nothing than do something. And I'm trying to say, just do something, get something down on the paper, try something, because you'll be surprised when you look at the marking scheme.
Years ago, there was a question that was really hard and it was just to draw a graph. But if you just drew the axes, if you drew a horizontal and vertical line, you got a chunk of marks.
Oh, I could even do that.
We could all do that, you know. So, and that's reassuring for them. Try something, do something.
And the same applies for ordinary level as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For ordinary level as well, they're even more generous with those at the start, you know, put down the form, pick the right formula, put the numbers in, you'd be half the marks there, you know. So, yeah, they are.
OK, I'm convinced. Louise Boylan, maths teacher, thank you so much for coming in and giving us that advice. And we will have more on the Leaving Cert next week. Coming up on tomorrow's show, Dr Fergal McNamara, an expert in haemorrhoid treatment, will be with me in studio to answer all your queries. You can get them into us by email today, dmc at rte.ie.
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