It was an exacting day for accounting students yesterday as the Leaving Cert higher exam demanded keen concentration and time management.

For the first time since the introduction of the new syllabus in 1997 the exam was scheduled for the afternoon - a cause of disappointment in some schools.

"All my honours accountancy students had to sit a three-hour physics exams in the morning," said TUI subject representative Ms Dolores O'Flynn. "The level of concentration required for the two subjects makes them unsuitable for scheduling on the same day. It's akin to running maths papers 1 and 2 together."

Ms O'Flynn was also critical of the layout of the higher paper, which she described as difficult to work with. "The first question, in particular, was hard to follow without a ruler."

A total of 7,255 students took yesterday's accounting exam; roughly one in three took the ordinary-level paper. The number of candidates has been falling for the last 10 years as students opt for business studies in preference to accounting, which is seen as a tough subject. Yesterday's ordinary-level paper was described as well-paced and followed the same pattern as previous years.