Observations on decisions to add an additional 10 points to the results of the 2025 State Matriculation Exams (SME)

• The State Matriculation Examination (SME) Assessment Committees (Committees) may have exceeded their authority in deciding to add an additional 10 points to the SME results.
• The Committees' arguments for setting the SME pass mark too high are questionable.
• The National Audit Office has decided to conduct an audit to examine the assessment of pupil achievement in general education.

Committees that added an extra 10 points to exam results may have exceeded their authority, and the arguments for this decision are questionable, according to an overview conducted by the National Audit Office Observations on decisions to add an additional 10 points to the results of the 2025 State Matriculation Exams (SME).

When the National Agency for Education (NAE) announced the exam results, the Committees established by order of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport (MESS) decided to add an additional 10 points to the final exam score of each high school graduate (without changing the maximum score). The decisions were made by four assessment Committees, on the grounds that the pass mark for the exams was too high. The minutes of the Committees' meetings stated that without this adjustment, a large number of pupils would fail the exams.

Having assessed the applicable legal regulations, the National Audit Office assumes that the Committees, by deciding to add an additional 10 points, may have exceeded their powers. This means that they applied a different procedure than that established in other higher-level legal acts. Such interventions raise doubts as to whether legal and educational principles have been complied with, as the abilities of pupils have been levelled, unequal competitive conditions were created for high school graduates, and the decision-making process itself may have undermined the system of legal regulation and admission to Lithuanian higher education institutions, as well as their stability, predictability, and reliability.

This poses risks to ensuring the principle of equality, as it has created unequal competitive conditions for state-funded places in higher education institutions. Unfair competition arises between pupils who have received additional points and pupils who have achieved particularly high results but have not received additional points. Pupils who scored 86 points or more were awarded less than 10 points, while those who scored more than 95 points were not awarded any additional points.

"Such decisions undermine young people's trust not only in the education system, but also in the state itself. More advanced pupils, faced with unfair rule changes, experience a fundamental sense of injustice. How can we motivate those who will take the exams next year if they see that the results are determined not by effort or knowledge, but by ill-considered decisions made by institutions? When we talk about the future of pupils, the Lithuanian labour market and the progress of the state in general, such important rules cannot be changed hastily and irresponsibly," says the Auditor General.

According to the National Audit Office, the Committees' arguments for adding extra points to the exam results are questionable. The Committees, claiming that pupils failed the exams due to an excessively high threshold for achievement, did not assess other structural factors, even though they had the opportunity and data to do so. In 2025, the number of high school graduates taking the exams increased significantly. In addition, the preparedness of pupils was not assessed. The analysis shows that the higher failure rate was due to the higher number of high school graduates from schools where pupils achievements are lower. It was also found that most of the pupils who passed the exam thanks to the added points were from schools with lower SME results.

After assessing the risks following this analysis, the National Audit Office decided to conduct an audit that would systematically examine the assessment of pupil achievement in general education. In recent years, the MESS has initiated fundamental changes in the education system. However, problems have emerged during the reforms: schools lack updated educational content and resources, the quality of teacher training is not always adequate, and there is a lack of smoothness in the preparation of exam tasks and the organization of the examination process. All this points to gaps in coordination between policymakers and implementers. The audit results are expected to be published next year.

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