Defective test paper brings student’s perfect score to below average

A mistake in printing test papers made Nguyen Thanh Huy, a twelfth grader at Ho Chi Minh City’s Bui Thi Xuan high school, receive a below-average grade of 2.5, instead of his deserved perfect score of 10 on the English multiple choice test taken during the high school graduation exam in early June.

After receiving the result two weeks ago, Huy was shocked to learn he only got 2.5 for English, a subject he had been doing well in at school. His family was frustrated while teachers at school were surprised by the grade.

Huy later applied to have his test reexamined, and his high school also demanded that the board of judges mark the exam thoroughly again.

“The result turned out to be the same using a digital marking system. When we did it manually, the test scored 10 out of 10,” Nguyen Minh Hoang, vice director of the Department of Education and Training, told Tuoi Tre.

Hoang explained that a mistake in printing exam papers led to the case of mis-grading Huy’s test, apparently the only such error among all of the tests. His paper was shorter than the others, and the machine was thus unable to recognize all the answers.

After discovering this reason, the committee also reexamined 100 English tests at the request of candidates, and the results remained the same.