Over 14,000 basic school students took the final exam this spring. The average score of the basic school mathematics examination was 65.1, which Estonia's Education and Youth Board (Harno) says is on par with the situation before the coronavirus pandemic and home learning.

During the previous two years when there was no passing threshold for the exam, the average score came to 55.9 points in 2021 and 59.6 in 2022.

Harno said that the 2023 exam results follow the same tendency observed in 2019 – girls scored somewhat higher than boys, while those who took the exam in Russian did slightly worse than those who took the Estonian exam.

The average score for boys was 62.7 percent, which was around 5 points below girls' average result of 67.6 percent.

The average score for the exam in Russian was 58.5, while it was 67 percent for the Estonian version.

23.2 percent or 3,254 students who took the exam failed to reach the 50 percent threshold needed to pass, which was up since the pre-coronavirus years. In 2017, 11.8 percent of students failed the exam, which grew to 20 percent in 2018 before coming down to 13.6 percent again in 2019.

During the years when no passing threshold was in effect, 37.9 percent failed in 2021 and 38.6 percent in 2022.

Harno concluded that this year's results nevertheless show that study performance has reached the pre-pandemic level and the field of education has bounced back.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!