Thousands of students began their Leaving and Junior Certificate exams yesterday. Teachers praised Leaving Cert English paper one as a “lovely” exam, while there were no surprises within the ordinary level paper. Home economics candidates were presented with a “challenging but fair” paper at higher level and a “student-friendly” offering at ordinary level, teachers said.The second day of exams kicks off with Engineering at 9.30am and English paper two follows at 2pm. Key readsNumber sitting Leaving Cert climbs to record levelLeaving Cert: 10 tips for parents supporting an exam student this monthWatch: Exams, points and planned celebrations: students on the exams‘I’m going to do medicine’: Student who left school in second year now aiming for top pointsSign up for our Classroom to College newsletterNiamh Towey - 30 minutes agoYou think the Leaving Cert is hard? Try the gaokaoAlmost 13 million students in China will start the gaokao on Sunday.It is the world’s biggest exam and by some measures the most psychologically challenging, according to our China Correspondent Denis Staunton, who wrote this fascinating piece about the exam.“It’s very tiring. The competition is intense. Every day feels exhausting. The feeling is that it’s tiring and difficult,” one of the students said.Students discuss the gaokao, China's university exam Niamh Towey - 36 minutes agoThis is the first year that students who qualify for the Reasonable Accommodations at Certificate Exams (RACE) scheme get an extra 10 minutes to complete their papers. The scheme is designed to help students with special educational needs who have difficulty in communicating what they know to an examiner because of a physical, visual, hearing and/or learning difficulty.Some of these accommodations can include reading assistance, scribes, voice-activated computers and being able to take the exam in a hospital.Were you one of those students who got 10 extra minutes yesterday? Did you think it was enough?Let me know by email niamh.towey@irishtimes.com or through our call-out here. Niamh Towey - 58 minutes agoDay two of the Leaving Certificate kicks off with engineering at 9.30am this morning.English paper two is in the afternoon, starting at 2pm.Yesterday appears to have started off as smoothly as we could have hoped, with general reaction to English paper one being positive.Home Economics in the afternoon seems to have caused a little bit more of a stir, with some teachers calling it unpredictable. You can read our full paper reviews for English here and Home Economics here. We will be bringing you live reaction to today’s papers here, along with advice for parents and pupils.I would love to hear from you as the exams go on - you can get me on niamh.towey@irishtimes.com.