Abitur exam
High school graduates in Hamburg despair of unsolvable math problem – school admits mistakes
Many students in a Hamburg school bit their teeth on a barely solvable math problem (symbol image)
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At a Hamburg school, high school graduates were faced with a practically impossible task in the math exam. You had been presented with the wrong test papers.
Many examinees at the grammar school in the Hamburg district of Blankenese must have broken out in a cold sweat during their math exam. The students racked their brains over one task in particular. In the meantime, the school administration had to concede: the problem of analytical geometry was practically impossible to solve.
A wrong number had crept in, so that the calculation didn’t add up. First, the “Hamburger Morgenpost” reported on the breakdown. Accordingly, the schools had initially received false exam documents from the school authorities. A correction was made the morning before the exam, but the school in Blankenese apparently did not take it into account.
Abitur in Hamburg: School did not take corrected tasks into account
The school authorities therefore see the error in the local school in the matter: “This is a completely normal and well-known procedure that is used every year. There was still enough time to exchange the tasks before the exam started,” said the spokesman for the school authorities , Peter Albrecht, “T-Online”. The correction mail was sent at 7.58 a.m., the check would not have started until nine o’clock. Apparently the error happened when typing the tasks.
Headmaster Michael Koops expressed his contrition in the “Hamburger Abendblatt”: “Unfortunately, this correction has not been observed here. We are very sorry, mistakes happen to us too.” A student told the “Hamburger Morgenpost” that she had “caught her teeth unsuccessfully with the task” and was therefore no longer able to solve other tasks. This is probably what happened to some of her classmates – even if the school authorities point out that the task could have been solved theoretically, but that this did not correspond to the expectations in the Abitur.
The further procedure is now being discussed, the school authorities and the school are in contact. One possibility would be for the students to repeat the exam. “The students affected must not suffer any disadvantages from the mistake,” explains Headmaster Koops. “That’s the most important thing for us.”
Sources: “Hamburger Morgenpost” (Paid Content) / “Hamburger Abendblatt” (Paid Content) / “T Online”
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