Student fights for 0.05 points to graduate

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An 18-year-old student from Breda is taking the Exam Board to court for having failed her final French exam by 0.05 points, preventing her from graduating and going to university in September.

While the Exam Board admitted that the question the student got wrong was not corrected properly, they did not admit to in a timely manner and the additional amount of points given afterwards was less than it was supposed to be, creating the 0.05 points shortage.

In fact, it has been known since this summer by everyone involved that this exam contained a handful of mistakes, even with multiple answers being correct. However, the correctors were obliged to correct the exams using an answer sheet with mistakes in it, which, even after having brought this to the Exam Board’s attention to be corrected, still had mistakes in it. In the words of a least one of my friends who teaches French here, c’est le bordel (it’s a mess).

Many of you know that the Dutch enjoy solving problems amicably, but the Exam Board is known for being reluctant to admit their mistakes despite having come under heavy fire as of late, especially with this French exam (in Dutch). A court is currently looking at the case, so the student does not miss her university registration deadline. According to the press, it’s also the first time that the Exam Board is going to court over this type of case.

If the student loses, this will get ugly and if the student wins, a whole bunch of other duped students will use the ruling in their favour, again putting pressure on the Exam Board to clean up their act. No wonder many Dutch students hate studying French.

UPDATE: The court found in favour of the Exam Board (in Dutch)

(Links: nu.nl, nos.nl)

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