Examiners reports on the NCTJ autumn NCE papers have been published - raising questions as to the structure of the trainee reporters' big day.

Newspaper Practice candidates face the paper at the end of an anxiety-filled day - and the pass rate this year was inflated to 46 per cent only by surplus marks from other sections of the exam.

One centre has suggested moving the paper, which tests legal knowledge, the ability to spot follow-up ideas, how to approach certain situations and public administration, to the beginning of the day when candidates are fresher.

The examiners' report said: "Answers to questions were in many cases, to say the least, disappointing.

"There must be something wrong when a candidate says he would ask a retired farmer 'what he used to do for a living' or in another case suggests illustrating his story 'with a pix of a man with the dead cousin he's never met'.

"These can't be the responses they would make in their offices… so what is going wrong? Is it purely examination nerves as many disappointed editors would have us believe?"

In the News Interview section there was a higher proportion of top-scoring papers with stories that were "a pleasure to read", mostly written to length.

But the report said: "On the down side, sentence construction, grammar, punctuation, inability to calculate timings, failure to gain basic information and spelling errors were all too evident.

"One marker wrote 'these were not what one should expect from journalists for whom English is the tool of the trade'."

In the Speech paper, the markers had hoped for a lot of vigorous reports that matched the material but found only a handful of stories that could be classed as outstanding.

They said: "Most stories were just about adequate. Should a higher standard be expected from trainees taking their final exams?"