Over 113,000 students begin their Leaving and Junior Certificate exams today with an acknowledgement from Minister for Education Mary Hanafin that some are being asked to do too much.
This morning's Irish Timesreports that Ms Hanafin wants to change the Leaving Cert timetable creating a two-stage process in which exams in English and Irish are taken in May.
The current Leaving Cert timetable will require higher-level English students to write for more than six hours today - a situation that must be change, Ms Hanafin said.
"Never again in their lives will they be asked to write so much over such an extended period of time," Ms Hanafin said.
The first maths and Irish papers will be held tomorrow, and the second Irish exam on Friday.
The timetable has come in for criticism from students, parents and education professionals.
The Labour Party's education spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan said the timetable appeared to have organised to meet the needs of the schools and the Examinations Commissions, rather than the pupils.
Ms O'Sullivan said: "A pupil taking English, Maths, Irish and Geography will be asked to spend 19 hours and ten minutes spread over the first four days responding to very challenging exam papers.
"This sort of timetable is at best placing pupils under extreme pressure and at worst subjecting them to wanton cruelty."
Ken Duggan, Principal at CBS Westland Row in Dublin agreed the schedule was too punishing.
"I know there has been a lot of opposition to splitting the [English] paper but in principle I think that the exams should be split. It is too much."
CBS Westland Row is a relatively small inner city school with around 180 pupils. Between 20 and 24 children will sit the Leaving Cert exam while about 30 pupils will do the Junior Cert.
Mr Duggan reminded students of the standard advice as they entered the exam hall
"I told them to remain calm and not get too excited, to read the paper over and over again. It's a lot of pressure on them for the first exam. There is a sense that it's all or nothing."
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) urged pupils de-stress.
"Students may feel nervous, but there are proven ways of alleviating stress," USI President Colm Hamrogue said yesterday.
"Taking 30 minutes out for some light exercise and eating a nutritionally-balanced meal improves concentration [and] a good night's sleep is really important."
Some 52,000 students enrolled for the Leaving Certificate, the lowest number taking the exam in more than 20 years.
For the first time the Romanian and Bulgarian languages will be among the Leaving Cert subjects examined. Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian and Slovakian were introduced last year.
Predictably, the hot and sunny weather is to continue until the weekend, with even hotter temperatures expected early next week.
The examinations run until Thursday June 21st for Junior Cert subjects and Friday June 22nd for Leaving Cert subjects. The written examinations in the Leaving Cert Applied programme finish on Thursday June 14th.
The results of the Leaving Cert will be available on Wednesday August 15th and Junior Cert in mid-September.
Additional reporting PA