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Abstract The role of symmetries and first integrals are well known mechanisms for the reduction of ordinary differential equations (odes) and, used in conjunction, lead to double reductions of the odes. In this article, we attempt to construct the first integrals of a large class of the well known second-order Painlevé equations. In some cases, variational and/or gauge symmetries have additional applications following a known Lagrangian in which case the first integral is obtained by Noether’s theorem. Sometimes, it is more convenient to adopt the ‘multiplier’ approach to find the first integrals. In a number of cases, we can conclude that the class is linearizable.