Sawtooth distribution in the scoring of school-leaving exams in mathematics–how lenient teachers are when it comes to threshold scores

Abstract

The school-leaving examination plays a key role in the Hungarian education system: it not only concludes secondary education, but also plays a crucial role in determining access to higher education. Therefore, it is particularly important to make sure that it is an objective measuring instrument. Mathematics is currently the only compulsory subject (at the lower level) which consist of only a written exam; so teachers scoring the written exams award the grades on their own as opposed to other subjects where the written exam is followed by an oral exam in front of a committee. This results in a surprising distribution of scores. In addition, due to the coronavirus epidemic, higher-level mathematics exams also consisted of only a written exam in 2020 and 2021; and somewhat surprisingly, a similar phenomenon was observed there, even though the tests were not corrected by the candidates’ own teachers. In this article, we have investigated this phenomenon, seeking explanations and suggesting solutions to the problem.