A quarter of students (24.8%) who sat for Maltese and Maths O-levels received an 'unclassified' (U) grade, statistics published by MATSEC about the May session of the exams show.
Amongst subjects with 699 students or more, the subject with the highest percentage of 'U' grades given was Environmental Studies. Removing absent students from the equation, nearly a third (32.5%) of all Environmental Studies students received a 'U' in their O-Level examination for this subject - this is up from 21.5% last year.
Physics was the second-worst performing subject with a 'U' grade rate of 28.9% from those who attended the exam. 24.8% of those who sat for the Mathematics and Maltese exams had a 'U' grade. This equates to 877 students receiving a 'U' in Physics, 872 students receiveing a 'U' grade in Maltese, and 976 students receiving such a grade in their Mathematics exam.
Unclassified rates are up for all but two major subjects since the 2022 main session last May; the only two subjects from the thirteen analysed that observed more students attaining a passing grade were Biology and French. French had the lowest percentage of students receiving a 'U' grade from the analysed subjects with just 5.8% (down from 12.8% in 2022), while Biology was still amongst the worst performing subjects as 27.4% (down from 28.3%) attained a 'U' Grade.
Removing students who were absent for the examinations from the statistics, 28.5% received a 'U' in Accounts, 24.6% received a 'U' chemistry, 14.1% received a 'U' computing, 13.6% received a 'U' English Language, 23.6% received a 'U' English Literature, 20.3% received a 'U' Italian, 25.2% received a 'U' Religion.
As for absenteeism, Accounting retained the highest absenteeism rate through both main sessions; this rate increased over the past year from 12.3% to 13.8% this year.
Absenteeism rates declined for 7/13 tabulated subjects. These were: English language, Environmental Studies, French, Italian, Maltese, Mathematics, and Religion.
A total of 5077 students were reported to participate in the May examination session for the attainment of their O-Levels according to MATSEC's General Statistics Report.