English paper one proved a perfect way to “lance the boil” on this year’s Leaving Certificate exams, teachers have said in what they called a “lovely” exam. Siobhan O’Donovan, teacher at The Patrician Academy in Mallow, Co Cork, said when her students came out of the exam “you could see the relief on their faces” and they were “very happy with it”.The paper began with a comprehension section, where students were given three different texts on the theme of influence. They had to answer questions on two of them.The first was an article published in the Financial Times Magazine in May 2024 about the spirit of Manchester by English author Jeanette Winterson. There was also an edited extract from British-Turkish writer Elif Shafak’s 2024 novel There are Rivers in the Sky and the third piece was two edited extracts on the topics of poetry and art.“These gave the well practised student plenty of scope to demonstrate their ability to understand, analyse and evaluate a piece of writing and respond to it using effective language and expression skills,” O’Donovan said. The second section was a composition and accounts for 25 per cent of the overall English mark. Robert McDermott, an English teacher at St Andrews in Booterstown, Dublin, said the essay options were “terrific”. “There were two short stories which were eminently accessible to those who had practised that. The two personal essays were both really lovely. The first one was on the influence of creative arts – that’s a real gift to those kids who read, who are creative, who have written journals.”“The other personal essay was a moment that enriched lives in a variety of ways. That could be as simple as a kind word from somebody, or it could be a much more complicated experience.“I thought it was great that the speech was for or against the motion that social media influencers are best ignored. And then there was a nice opinion piece on the value of music. Once again it was stuff that kids could access.“A good paper for all levels and abilities. I suspect that this paper will be answered quite strongly across the board,” McDermott said.The ordinary level paper “held no surprises,” O’Donovan said, and “allowed students to demonstrate their skills”.The paper featured an extract from academic Dr Katriona O’Sullivan’s memoir Poor and an extract from the short story Fair Play by Belfast-based writer Jan Carson.“The Q B’s were appropriate with a dialogue, an email to the local council and a talk to incoming First Year students about moving from primary to secondary school.“Finally theessay titles were clear and provided plenty of choice to candidates.“All in all it was deemed to be a manageable paper,” O’Donovan said.In the Junior Certificate paper, O’Donovan said that while it was a “busy” paper, “students seemed happy to have been able to demonstrate their knowledge of literature, poetry, film and drama in a paper where no studied component was left out”.