Exam verdict: Leaving Certificate Applied: The 3,603 candidates for this year's Leaving Certificate Applied programme were treated to a heavy first day of endless writing and weighty social discussion.

The day began with the two- hour English and Communications paper, with few surprises apart from the quantity of information required. Students emerged exhausted after completing a CV, a treatise on work experience, a job application, an advertisement design and an aural comprehension that was more like a hearing test, according to reports.

"Many students had difficulty picking out the relevant information from the tape because there was a lot of background noise," according to ASTI subject representative Ms Veronica Harris.

Apart from the physical challenge of getting all the information down, however, students reported satisfaction with the content of the paper.

Leaving Cert Applied (LCA) students would be very familiar with such practical skills from project work. Social Education was the subject of yesterday's afternoon paper and there was no respite for students weary from the morning's lengthy paper.

The exam opened with an aural comprehension on the subject of child labour and lingered on solemn topics such as drug misuse and HIV/AIDS throughout the two hours.

Physical challenges persisted for students in the afternoon paper as the Ordnance Survey map proved difficult to read. Other students described problems decoding a dense article on the subject of wind energy written by journalist Mary Murphy. Ms Harris welcomed the environmental theme but felt that the subject matter was too narrow. "Overall, the first day was a difficult start for LCA students," she said.

Students have already completed 66 per cent of examinable work by the end of the summer term, so this week's exams constitute a third of their overall results. The number of students taking the LCA programme is up by over 300 on last year.