Yesterday's higher-level Leaving Cert. maths paper delighted some students and devastated others. Students sitting the ordinary-level paper were also on a high, believing that their performances on paper two had outstripped their efforts on paper one. Sadly, foundation-level students were less than impressed - maths exams at this level are becoming increasingly more difficult, teachers say.

At CBS Youghal, Co Cork, higher and ordinary-level candidates said they preferred maths paper two to maths paper one. "It gave them a boost," commented the school's maths teacher, Mr Mark Slocum. "The fact that maths is over two papers means that you can make up a lot of ground." Mr Cammie Gallagher, who teaches maths at St Jarlath's College, Tuam, Co Galway, confirmed that his students were happier than they were after Thursday's exam. "The honours paper was lovely overall," he said. "It was very fair and everything they had looked forward to came up."

It was, though, a long paper. "Depending on the questions they picked, students could find it difficult to finish in two-and-a-half hours," he said. Mr Slocum noted that questions 1(c), 3(c) and 8(b) all took a long time to answer. Students in one Dublin school, however, were less than impressed by the higher-level paper.

A mother contacted The Irish Times to report that her son had arrived home "devastated" after the exam. "The paper threw everybody sideways and they're all good students," she said. Ms Eileen Scanlon, ASTI subject representative and a teacher at Salerno Secondary School in Galway, regarded yesterday's higher-level paper two as a more difficult than paper one. Question 4 (a) apart, parts (a) and (b) of the questions were easy. However, some students found the trigonometry question "difficult enough" since it involved, "transforming the left-hand side of the equation into a form that could be used to solve the equation". Nonetheless, other parts of this question were "lovely", she said.

The ordinary-level paper was "do-able and contained no surprises", according to Ms Maria Kelly, who teaches at Bishopstown Community School, Cork. The paper, however, was long. A number of parts (b) and (c) contained three questions rather than the usual two. Question 1(c) on area and volume was unecessarily wordy, she noted, and question 2(c) on co-ordinate geometry was "a bit abstract".

Foundation maths students were less well served, teachers believed. "The gap between ordinary-and foundation-level maths is closing," commented Mark Slocum. "Both the topics and the standard are becoming very similar," he said. "The standard is getting higher, but overall the paper was fine. However, students had difficulties with question 6(a) because of the wording," Mr Cammie Gallagher confirmed.