A medical student at Erasmus University Rotterdam wanted to inspect an exam, but his degree programme declined his request. He was informed that he could only do so if he had failed the exam multiple times.

The student refused to leave it at that, writes Erasmus Magazine, and took his grievance to the Board of Appeal for Examinations. The board agreed with the student. Thanks to the new European privacy rules (GDPR), students always have the right of inspection. The GDPR has been in force in the Netherlands since May 2018.

Copy

As the answers to exam questions are viewed as ‘personal data’, the providers of those answers are always entitled to request a copy free of charge, years later if need be. The Board of Appeal for Examinations holds that this is a student right. This view is also reflected in a court judgment in May of this year.

Once this judgment penetrates into higher education, it will potentially have serious consequences, as many degree programmes will need to change their procedures. Inspection of exams is sometimes barely possible, if at all, or only at fixed times. The new GDPR rules put an end to that.

Incidentally, the Rotterdam Board of Appeal for Examinations states that the degree programme is only obliged to provide the answers, but not necessarily the exam questions. The student in question does not agree to this, however; after all, how can you then verify whether an answer has correctly been marked as wrong? As such, he is appealing to the court of education, CBHO.