On Monday, 2,550 young people who had taken an admission test for the University of Tartu were told their results were zero and that they were out of the competition. When the university became aware of the mistake, they told the candidates the correct result would arrive later.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Education said there is a better understanding of the causes of the problem.

Marit Teras, product manager-analyst at the Education Information Systems Department of the Ministry of Education, told ERR the test was conducted on several days.

The results of the first test day, March 28, have been announced to all participants and the protocol has been confirmed, but the problems concerned the next test, which took place on April 11.

"On Monday morning at around 10:30, preparation of the protocol for entering the test results was started. During the work with the protocol, a process was initiated in the system about which the system displayed no warning and did not prevent the action. Since the results had not yet been entered into the protocol or published, this led to a situation where the system mistakenly treated the results as missing, and the protocol was confirmed without the actual results," Teras explained.

She said, at first glance, it seemed that this was the same error that occurred last year, but it turned out not to be.

"Last year, an archived test was copied, and the markers for publishing and confirming the protocol were carried over during the copying process. This error was corrected, and this year those markers were no longer carried over when the test was copied," Teras described.

The Ministry of Education confirmed work is being done to solve the problem.

With the academic test, 544 candidates secured a study place at the university. This year, the University of Tartu will admit nearly 2,700 students to first-level studies.

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