No higher marks for pupil who challenged French exam results in court

An 18-year-old girl from Breda will not get higher marks on her French exam after she challenged the results in court, the court in Utrecht ruled on Monday, Omroep Brabant reports.

The VWO student scored 0.05 points too few on one question to pass the French exam, and thereby also failed her diploma. The French exam was already under fire due to a number of mistakes.

This case revolves around question 15. The Breda student's answer was initially marked wrong, but the authors later acknowledged that a mistake was made in they way the question was asked, resulting in there being multiple ways to interpret it. The Dutch tests and exams council CvTE therefore decided that the question will not count. The results were therefore adjusted so that students who got the answer wrong still received some points.

But the adjustment was not enough for the Breda student to pass, according to her lawyer. According to her, she would have had enough points to pass if her answer to question 15 was marked correct the first time - students who gave the correct answer received the full marks for the question, she argued. She decided to go to court to see if she can get the 0.05 points she needs to get her diploma, and thereby be able to start university in September.

The court ruled that the CvTE acted according to the rules by compensating the entire group of students for the mistake made in the exam. According to the court, the fact that this decision by the CvTE had a negative impact on this student, does not mean that the CvTE acted incorrectly. Failing by such a small margin is extremely unfortunate, but the manner of assessment does entail some borderline cases, the court emphasized. 

The girl's lawyer called the ruling "extremely disappointing", according to NOS.