More than 50,000 Leaving Cert students appear set to sit their first exam paper in English on a Saturday morning next May.
In another new development, the State Exams Commission is set to endorse plans which will see a radical shake-up of the exam timetable.
This will end the practice of students being asked to take two of the more taxing subjects - such as history and business - on the one day. Instead, the most popular subjects will be spread more evenly throughout the June exam period.
Last night, the Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin, who has pushed for reform, said she expected to announce full details shortly.
The Minister and the State Exams Commission hope to finalise plans before October, when the Leaving Cert 2008 timetable will be published.
The main features of the new package include:
All students will take English Paper 1, featuring an essay, comprehension and other "unseen" texts on a Saturday in May;
Students will continue to take Irish Paper 1 and Paper 2 in the first week of the exams;
Students will no longer be asked to take two exams in hugely diverse subjects in the one day;
The exams will continue to run for 13 days, but papers in the most popular subjects will be spread more evenly throughout that period.
The changes represent a victory for Ms Hanafin, whose plans for a so-called two-stage Leaving Cert faced strong opposition from school managers. They had expressed concern about the logistical challenge of establishing exam centres and possible disruption to the daily life of the school.
Ms Hanafin has revised her plan to also schedule Irish Paper 1 in May after discussions with more than 100 Leaving Cert students earlier this month. Students were happy, she said, to take the two Irish written exams as they had already completed one part of the exam - the oral test.
Students will again have two hours and 50 minutes to complete Paper 1 in English next May.
The reform of the Leaving Cert timetable comes amid widespread concern about the physical and mental burden being placed on Leaving Cert students. This year, some higher level Leaving Cert students spent a total of 28 hours and 20 minutes in the exam hall during the first week of the Leaving.
In June, the Labour Party said the current timetable represented a kind of "wanton cruelty". Both second-level teaching unions - the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland and the Teachers' Union of Ireland - have backed change.
Michael Moriarty, chief executive of the Irish Vocational Education Association, representing more than 280 schools, has said that the current timetable was "like asking a pony to run the Grand National. It makes far too many physical demands of students and does not give them the opportunity they deserve to do themselves justice."
John White, general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland, said reform which would see major subjects spread across the timetable was sensible and reasonable.
