Thai students appeared to fail six out of seven subjects on average in a university entry examination this year, Samphan Phanphruk, director of The National Institute of Educational Testing Service (Niets), revealed on Friday.
Of seven major subjects, each comprising 100 full marks, Thai had the highest average score at 58, while the mean results of the remaining six subjects — social science, English, mathematics, chemistry, physics and biology — were at less than half of the full marks, Mr Samphan said.
The seven-subject exam was conducted last month. Results of the exam were just officially announced yesterday. The exam results can be used partly for admission into certain universities that participate in central direct admissions.
Students could choose the subjects they were going to take in central direct admissions. There were 150,201 students taking English, 149,384 taking Thai, 147,879 taking social science, 136,033 taking mathematics and about 90,000 students studying the rest of the subjects.
This year some students managed to score 100 in mathematics, physics and chemistry, but some scores of the first two subjects were zero, according to the Niets figures. The results also showed scores for English and biology dropping to zero.
Mr Samphan said the level of difficulty of each subject was likely to be similar to those in 2014.
This year, the average score in every subject ranged between 20-58. Thai, social science and chemistry enjoyed the highest average scores at 58, 35 and 31, respectively.
Figures for the Thai test showed 55% of overall students scored 50 to 70, and 63% of students who underwent the examination in social science, chemistry and biology managed to achieve scores of 20-40.
Compared with last year, the mean score in Thai increased to 58 from 54 while for social science it decreased to 35 from 39.
English scores also fell from 31 to 29 this year while mathematics decreased from last year's figure of 25 to 20. For physics, scores dropped from 28 to 26 this year.
Results also showed some scores had improved. The chemistry score rose to 31 from 27 last year and biology results rose from 28 to 29.