Most students sitting yesterday's Leaving Certificate Music exam did so safe in the knowledge they had already accounted for half of their marks.
Last year, 94 per cent of students also achieved an honour in the higher-level exam, with most students sitting the practical element of their exam - worth 50 per cent of their overall mark - in April.
According to Anne Maxwell, TUI subject representative from Carrick-on-Shannon Community School, this allows students to enter the exam hall with a degree of confidence, as they are aware that they may already have passed the exam.
Yesterday's listening paper was a "nice exam with some little tricky bits," she said. The uniform use of CD players had led to a "big improvement" in the quality of the playback recording, she added.
"It means you can guarantee students around the country are listening to the same thing," she said. "I think most students would have been very happy. It has been a lot more difficult in the past."
Students also faced a composition paper yesterday afternoon. John Francis Murphy, ASTI subject representative at Holy Family secondary school in Newbridge, said that while the questions themselves were "fine" at higher level, much depended upon which questions students chose to answer.
In particular, students choosing question five, which provided students with a written melody and asked them to write a bass part in a particular style, would have been "put to the pin of (their) collar" to finish on time.This was especially true if they also answered question one, on melody, he added.
At ordinary level there was "nothing that would catch people" in the listening paper, Mr Murphy said. This was equally true of the ordinary- level composition paper, where most students would have opted for questions one and two.
Ms Maxwell said that while students at ordinary level had plenty of time to complete the listening paper, they would have had to pay close attention to what they were hearing.
There were three "difficult" dictation-type sections in questions one, two and six, she said.
The composition paper at ordinary level was "very fair" and was along the lines of previous years, she added.
