Leaving Cert students across the country were presented with fair but challenging maths papers today.
The ordinary level paper 1 was regarded by teachers as a good test despite being tricky in parts.
The vast majority of students - more than 40,000 of the total 53,000 who sat the exam today - took the ordinary level paper and many stand an excellent chance of doing well according to Christina Kennedy Asti representative and teacher in Seamount College.
However, some difficult part (c)s in questions would have left all but the best students struggling to reach an A standard according to Ms Kennedy.
"The first and second parts of the questions were very straightforward, very much in line with previous years," she said. "But some of the (c) parts were very difficult. The aim of those parts are to distinguish the As and Bs from the rest but I do think they were probably trickier than previous years."
TUI representative Brid Griffin praised the language used on the paper which she described as very straightforward. "Students knew exactly what was being asked of them, which is a good thing," she said.
She was less pleased with part of question two - one of the algebra questions. "It happened in the higher level paper too, but students were asked to apply a particular method when solving a problem," she said. "Handing them a particular method doesn't give them that scope."
Higher level students were happy with their paper 1 which teacher said had been well received all round.
It may not have started well for some, however with examiners throwing something of a curveball in the very first question.
Students are supposed to answer six questions out of eight on the paper and two of those questions involve sequence and series. "They included sequences in question one," said Asti representative Elaine Devlin, a teacher in De La Salle College, Dundalk. "I think that was unfair. You either give students a real choice or you take the choice away. You don't pretend to give a choice."
"I'd say about 40 percent of students would have been thrown by that," agreed John Brennan of the Ballinteer Institute. "It may not have been worth very many marks but I don't think it's fair to do that in the first question."
The rest of the paper was reasonably straightforward, particularly the algebra questions according to Aidan Roantree of the Institute of Education. "Question four was absolutely gorgeous," Mr Brennan said.