Reported discrepancies in O-Level English oral not technical in nature or result of malicious act: MOE

The anomalies discovered in recent Singapore GCE O-Level English oral examinations were not due to technical issues or a malicious act, stated Senior Minister of State for Education Janil Puthucheary on August 5. Candidates who took the exam on July 15 noticed discrepancies between the text prompt they saw on screen and what the oral examiner later read aloud.

This led to complaints on social media, prompting SEAB to investigate. The discrepancies arose from candidates recalling different phrases, such as "Would you go..." or "Would you be interested...", despite seeing the same prompt and video on a computer screen. SEAB found no pattern among the 432 candidates who reported issues, which came from 200 different oral examiner teams.

All candidates and examiners accessed the same secure, encrypted material, and SEAB's technical assessment found no evidence of a system malfunction. The mean score for the Jul 15 oral exam remained comparable to other sessions this year, and the candidates who reported discrepancies performed as well as those who did not. MOE will work with these candidates to apply for special consideration, ensuring fair assessment.

In response to questioning about the incident potentially being a case of collective hallucination, Puthucheary emphasized the variety of phrases recalled and the significance of this data point, rejecting suggestions of privileging computer forensic evidence over testimonies from human witnesses.