Exam Results Of 7,500 KPSS Applicants Incorrectly Entered Into System

After several scandals besetting Turkey's top exam board, the Student Selection and Placement Center (ÖSYM), the exam results of more than 7,500 applicants of what is one of the largest centralized exams in Turkey have been incorrectly entered into the system.

It has been revealed that the exam scores of more than 7,500 participants of the Public Personnel Selection Examination (KPSS) -- a centralized assessment used to determine those eligible to be employed in state agencies -- were incorrectly entered into the ÖSYM's mainframe.

However, the incorrect insertion of exam results is not the only problem plaguing the ÖSYM. For example, when announcing the results of this year's KPSS, which was held in June, it announced that 12 of the exam questions had been canceled.

There are also ongoing investigations into 15 other KPSS questions, which if found to be faulty will bring the number of wrong questions on the KPSS to 27.

Three questions have been canceled this year alone on the Undergraduate Placement Exam (LYS), three more on the Higher Education Examination (YGS) and one on the TEOG exam.

In a bid to curb nepotism and favoritism, in 2002, Masum Türker, then a state minister within the coalition government headed by the late Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, was one of the first to introduce the KPSS.

A statement from the ÖSYM on Tuesday said 12 of the questions in the geography and social sciences sections were canceled as legal cases had been filed for the cancelation of some questions on the tests.

The Turkish Geographers' Association (TGA) had previously called 11 of the questions on the geography test faulty.

A group of prospective teachers submitted an application to the ÖSYM on July 19 and requested the cancelation of the 11 geography questions, citing TGA's claims about them.

This year's Transition from Primary to Secondary Education (TEOG) exams, taken on April 29-30, were also the subject of controversy. The Ministry of Education had to postpone the announcement of the results, which was scheduled for June 24, due to a legal case launched in a dispute regarding an exam question in English, which was later canceled on June 28.

The ministry finally announced the results of the exam on its official website on June 29. However, the results announced by the Ministry of Education turned out to be wrong due to a miscalculation of the grades of students from ethnic minorities, which triggered another recount of the results. The Ministry of Education announced via a press statement on its official website on July 6 that the TEOG exam results had been recounted after the miscalculation.

Banu Kesgin, one of the applicants who had her points incorrectly recorded into the system, told Today's Zaman that 13 of the questions she answered correctly were calculated incorrectly. “I was shocked when I saw the KPSS results. I studied to be a primary school teacher [in university]. All primary school teachers are the victims of the same problem. I tried to contact an authorized office but no one is interested,” she said.

“We [primary school teachers] want the exam to be recalculated, this time properly,” Kesgin said.

Sedat Değer, vice president of the Anatolian Education Personnel Union (Anadolu Eğitim-Sen), told Today's Zaman after all of the recent mishaps that the integrity of the ÖSYM should be questioned and that it should be closed down.

“The ÖSYM, which cannot even prepare proper questions, expects students to be able to answer them,” Değer said. “If the ÖSYM cannot prepare proper questions and cannot calculate the points of the exams, we should go ahead and close it down.”

Ömer Demir, who heads the ÖSYM, made a statement regarding the 12 questions that were canceled on the 2015 KPSS exam, saying there could sometimes be “tiny mishaps” with some of the questions.

Speaking on the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) recently, Demir said: “There can be tiny mishaps with some of them [questions]. We would wish there wasn't but this is not an unexpected situation. Questions based on textbooks are sometimes canceled because they are seen to be different in other textbooks, and sometimes a single letter wrong in the wording can lead to a question being canceled.”

Mistakes have made ÖSYM rich

According to a report in the Bugün daily on Friday, the head of the Anatolian Education Union (Anadolu Eğitim Sen), Cansel Güven, said the ÖSYM was made rich by the “mistakes made on exams.”

Stating that TL 20 was paid to apply for every petition to cancel a question deemed faulty, Güven said 200,000 petitions were made last year. “We [Anadolu Eğitim Sen] were informed of 200,000 petitions last year. Think about it, TL 20 per question [per person],” she said.

According to the report, the fee that an applicant has to pay to be able to scrutinize his/her question paper is TL 50. While the ÖSYM charges TL 10 to any person wishing to change their photograph in the exam database.

Wrong questions aimed at discrediting exam

The heads of education unions have said that the mistakes leading to 12 questions being canceled in the most recent KPSS were done on purpose and aimed at discrediting the exam.

The heads of the Turkish Education Personnel Union (Türk Eğitim-Sen) and the Education Personnel Union (Eğitim-Sen) recently spoke to the Taraf daily, where they suggested that the real aim behind the scandal was to discredit the KPSS exam and allow for separate exams for each government institution.

İsmail Koncuk, head of Türk Eğitim Sen, told Taraf that the ÖSYM's blunder could actually be a trap to weaken the merits of the KPSS, allowing the government to abolish it more easily. “This could be a trap. The ruling party could be trying to discredit the exam so as to allow it to more easily install a likeminded bureaucracy in government institutions, because the number of wrong questions is above acceptable,” he said.

Kamuran Karaca, head of Eğitim Sen, told Taraf: “This is an intentional action. It cannot be explained with wrong questions. In time they [the government] will prepare wrong questions, half-baked questions and mistaken questions on all exams, including university entrance exams.”

Süleyman Kayhan, İstanbul (Cihan/Today's Zaman)