Every year, Junior and Leaving Cert students claim their exams are getting harder, often leading parents to grumble about how things were "back in my day".
But it turns out the teenagers may be onto something, based on new research that found an exam maths question so tough even parents can't get it right.
The study by Save My Exams put the question to mums and dads and shockingly, 100% of them failed.
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However, the trick question failed to dint parents' confidence, despite their poor results. Of the 1,000 parents quizzed, 92% were unable to answer the question and 8% failed to get the correct answer. Yet, an average of 75% of these parents still believed they could pass their children's exams.
The maths question was found on a UK GCSE paper, which is the equivalent of the Junior Certificate in Ireland.
As reported by Mirror UK, the maths question shows a shape with all its measurements in centimetres, where the area of the shape is A cm².
Respondents are asked to show that A = 2x² + 24x + 46.
Thankfully, Save My Exams' maths lead Lucy Kirkham has worked out the answer for anyone left stuck by the question.
Sharing advice, Lucy said: "Seeing questions with loads of Algebra can be scary but breaking them down into smaller chunks will help you work through them more easily. Our maths experts at Save My Exams create colour-coded model answers which break down each question into easier steps to carefully guide users to the correct answer.
"This question gives you the answer you're working towards, which can sometimes be off-putting as you wonder 'How am I ever going to get there?'. Don’t let it worry you, just try to start with the first step and you'll surprise yourself with how far you can get.
"Even if you don’t get all the way through, marks are awarded for different stages of your working so you can always try to pick up some marks and use our model answers to see how you’d pick up the rest."
It is not just maths that confuses parents, however, though it ranked as the worst subject.
According to the research by Save My Exams, parents struggled the most with Maths (53%), followed by Science (35%), Spanish (30%), French (29%) and English Literature (27%).
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