59 pct of Romanian high-school graduates passed the Baccalaureate exam

59.22 percent of the high-school graduates in Romania have passed the Baccalaureat exam in the 2014 summer session, up 3 percent from last year, according to data released by the Education Ministry on Sunday. Nearly 40 percent of the 150,000 graduates that showed up for the exam failed to get a passing average grade of 5.

High schools from all over the country are due to post the final grades today, graduates have one day to submit appeals and the final results will be made public on July 11th.

Though Education Minister Remus Pricopie had warned that no irregularities would be tolerated, problems were reported, such as the one in Arad, western Romania, where a school inspector asked for money to help some candidates pass the exam.

A quarter of Romania’s high school graduates did not sign up for this year’s Baccalaureate. In total, 44,000 12th graders chose to skip the final high school exam this year, which was double compared to last year.

Last year, the Baccalaureate promotion rate was of 56.4 percent, up from 44.4 percent in 2012, which was also the lowest in the last four years.

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The Ministry of Education will introduce a third exam session, possibly in spring, to maximize graduates’ chances of passing, seeing as for this special session they will only have to test for the subjects they failed in the first two exams. The change was adopted through government ordinance at the end of June 2014, according to hotnews.ro.