On Saturday, nearly 4,000 youths took entrance exams for state high schools, which will not be considered due to a technical glitch. They are now waiting to see what happens next. Among them is parent Piret Tali, whose son took the tests for Pelgulinna State High School.

"What really upset me was that he went there around noon, and it was already known that the tests had essentially failed, but despite that, I think, about 1,000 people still took those tests," Tali said.

Indrek Lillemägi, the director of Pelgulinna State High School (PERG), stated that each school will proceed based on its own admission procedures.

"For example, at Pelgulinna State High School, we indeed find an opportunity to invite all students who marked PERG as their first preference for an interview round, and then the final ranking will be based on the results of the interview and the comprehensive grades from basic school," Lillemägi explained.

"Our school was the first preference for more than 1,000 students, and we will interview most of them," he added.

This means that those who marked the school as their second choice will not get the opportunity for an interview and admission.

Piret Tali believes that the system administrator should be held accountable for its flaws, as the same youths have encountered three malfunctions in the examination environment EIS in just a few weeks.

"Today, the results of the EIS practice exam in the Estonian language crashed. The English language practice exam, which was a couple of weeks ago, also crashed. /.../ If we take away young people's faith in that these systems are fair, then it's very difficult. A real mess," Tali commented.

The situation is also referred to as a complete mess by Aivo Riisenberg, the head of the Ministry of Education's technology department, but he sees the blame as wider than just the ministry.

"It's too early to draw conclusions about whether someone is responsible or not. We can talk about responsibility after April 20, when we have a new e-exam. /.../ The communication mistake was universal. I wouldn't single out any institution specifically," Riisenberg said, acknowledging that mistakes were made by schools, the ministry and the Education and Youth Board (Harno).

Riisenberg claimed to "Aktuaalne kaamera" that state high schools did not inform the ministry about their plan to conduct entrance exams on Saturday, which came as a surprise to them, and thus the exam environment went untested.

The director of Pelgulinna High School finds this claim odd. "Certainly, we had agreements in place. We are, after all, schools managed by the ministry, so of course all parties were informed that the tests were happening," Lillemägi confirmed.

Riisenberg also believes that relying solely on technology was a mistake, and schools should have been prepared to switch testing to paper.

"We had a plan B in case individual students encountered problems, where we had a few paper sheets ready, but the volume of this test would have been tens of pages and indeed, to start duplicating this for 3,800 people at the same time while students are waiting, confused, was just not technically possible," Lillemägi explained.

Youths who took the entrance exams for state high schools will receive detailed information about what happens next on Wednesday.

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