Higher students were entering new territory this year, as the first batch to be examined on new content.
Marj Adams, principal teacher at Forres Academy, felt the exam was fair overall, in that it sampled all areas of the course. But she agreed with students who felt that some questions were not worded clearly. In the critical thinking section in particular, the wording was not always as clear as it had been in the specimen paper.
The final question in the same section, however, stimulated a “great deal of debate” among philosophy teachers; even they could not agree on whether the given argument was an example of an application of consequences.
Mrs Adams felt that questions on Descartes (above) in the epistemology section were straightforward, although some students were uncertain about the marking allocation. Colleagues in other schools had felt that question 3 on David Hume - whom her students had not covered - was too testing for Higher students.
The Intermediate 2 paper was “reasonable”, although Mrs Adams felt the critical thinking section was “almost too easy”. It served to illustrate the size of the gap between Intermediate 2 and Higher, she said.
