The students who passed the Baccalaureate exams within the basic session this year represent 54.14%, as against 44% last year. Acting Minister of Education Maia Sandu told a news conference that this significant growth shows that the initiated reforms ensure authentic performance and the results represent a deserved accomplishment of the students who made effort and were correctly assessed, IPN reports.

The acting minister said that 59 candidates were removed from the examination halls because they were caught cheating or had banned objects on them. Last year this figure stood at 161. “I want to note that we ascertained a change in the attitude towards the holding of the Baccalaureate session this year. The number of students who tried to copy was much lower than the previous years. Most of the students came to the exams ready to pass them with their own forces and this fact is gladdening” she stated.

Within the current session, three students got the grade ‘10” in all the exams, while another 149 students got ‘10’ and ‘9’ in all the exams. 18.58% of the candidates got grades higher or equal to ‘7’. According to Maia Sandu, though the exact sciences remain a challenge for the students, the results in the math exams improved by 15% on last year, but those in the exam in the Romanian and universal history was worse. The average general grade in all the Baccalaureate exams is ‘5.8’, as opposed to ‘5.6’ in 2014. The final results will be made public after the challenges filed by students are examined.

On July 16-23, there will be held the additional Baccalaureate session for students who didn’t come to the exams of the basic session for objective reasons and for those who didn’t get positive grades. As many as 26,818 candidates applied to take the Baccalaureate exams this year. Of these, 7,533 are students who failed the exams the previous sessions.