Sulaymaniyah students protest alleged errors in 12th Grade exams

SULAYMANIYAH — Grade 12 students in Sulaymaniyah protested for a second consecutive day, alleging that multiple errors appeared in this year’s unified final examinations and warning the mistakes could hurt their results, while the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Ministry of Education says only three questions were affected.

The Grade 12 general examinations are standardized, ministry-administered exams taken by all final-year secondary students across the Kurdistan Region. Scores are a key milestone, determining both graduation results and eligibility for admission to public universities and many higher education programs, with higher marks generally opening access to more competitive fields and institutions.

The students said mistakes appeared in most subjects and submitted their demands to the Sulaymaniyah General Directorate of Education. They said officials had promised to make up for any lost marks but warned they would resume protests if that commitment was not met.

One protesting student, Varin Rasul, said the problems were widespread, alleging that errors appeared across most subjects and that only a few exams were free of mistakes.

Saiwan Ali, deputy minister of education and head of the ministry’s Higher Examination Committee, rejected those claims in a statement to 964media, saying only three questions across the biology and chemistry exams contained errors.

Ali said the ministry addressed the faulty questions by revising the answer key, the standard remedy when a board finds a defective question after an exam, reissuing it to accept more than one correct option or, where a question cannot be salvaged, to credit every answer. In biology, he said, all four choices will be accepted, while question 39 had two correct options and students who chose either received full credit. The chemistry exam contained one similar question, with two answers accepted.

Ali said a specialized committee reexamined all questions after the exams concluded and found no errors in any other subject, with no formal complaints recorded. He said there were no mistakes in the Arabic language exam, adding that some students had found it difficult but the questions themselves were sound. All exam questions are prepared by specialized committees, he said.