Four point nine five

I · The line

An exam that ends in a single number

Every written paper at the Romanian baccalaureate ends in a number with two decimals. The paper is scanned in the exam room the moment the candidate hands it in, and travels without a name to two teachers in a county other than the candidate's own, assigned automatically. The two mark it separately, and if their marks are no more than a point apart, the paper's grade is their arithmetic mean, written to two decimals and never rounded. That is where the exam's five-hundredth steps come from.

Across the two sessions held in 2024, teachers wrote 495,635 such numbers. Laid out side by side they draw a predictable landscape: a broad peak among the high marks, a thin tail down towards 2 and 3, a pile-up at 10 where the scale runs out. Everywhere, neighbouring steps resemble each other. There is one place where they do not, and it sits exactly where the rules draw the border between passing and failing.

The grade 5.00 was given 10,250 times, more often than any other grade in the exam, including 10. The step below it, 4.95, was given 1,334 times.

Five hundredths of a point separate the two, and a ratio of nearly eight to one.

II · The slope that falls

The closer a paper sits to passing, the fewer companions it has

In an ordinary distribution the number of papers rises and falls smoothly, without jumps between adjacent steps. On the last four steps before the line, the movement runs against the shape of the hill: 1,930 papers at 4.80, then 1,810 at 4.85, then 1,638 at 4.90, then 1,334 at 4.95. Getting closer to a pass empties the steps instead of filling them.

The ten steps between 4.50 and 4.95 hold 16,591 papers between them. The single step at 5.00 holds 10,250, six tenths of everything awarded across the whole band below it.

III · No other whole number

Round numbers draw a few extra papers everywhere, and 5 draws differently

Whole grades have a small pull of their own, visible at every value: 4.00 appears three per cent more often than 3.95, and 9.00 eleven per cent more often than 8.95. Apart from 5, the largest departure in the table is at 6.00, where the ratio reaches 1.37, still a modest gathering. At 5 the ratio is 7.68.

The only other place where papers pile up is the top mark, and there the pile explains itself: above 10 there is no step for anyone to stand on. Above 5 there are a hundred.

IV · The second reading

The same paper, two other teachers, a different number

A candidate unhappy with a grade can ask for the paper to be read again. The scanned paper then goes to two different teachers, again in a county other than the candidate's own, and whatever comes out becomes the final grade, higher or lower. The student signs a form acknowledging this beforehand. In 2024, 64,383 papers went through a second reading.

Of those, 61,177, or 95 in every 100, came out with a different number than they went in with. Half moved by at least three tenths of a point, and 4,522 moved by a whole point or more. Grades rise more often than they fall, 59 per cent against 36, and the rest stay put.

These papers are not an ordinary sample: they reach a second reading because someone was unhappy with the first. What they show is how far a paper's grade can travel when it is read again from scratch, by people who did not have it in their hands the first time.

The teachers doing the second reading rebuild the notch as well. They put 5.00 on 1,390 papers and 4.95 on 441, so the ratio between the passing step and the one below it stays at three to one.

V · Who crosses the line

Three thousand two hundred and twenty-three diplomas

At the second reading, 5,467 papers went in with a grade below 5 and came out at 5 or above. Another 1,505 travelled the other way and fell under the line.

Counted in people rather than papers, the figures read like this: 3,223 candidates passed the 2024 baccalaureate because their papers were read a second time, and would have failed on the first marking. Another 24 had passed on the first marking and lost it on the second.

Of the 110,797 candidates who passed, 2,711 cleared at least one subject with exactly 5.00. Their diploma rests on the most crowded step in the entire exam.

VI · Who asks

Below the line people ask, above it they do not

The appetite for a second reading grows as a grade climbs towards the line without reaching it: at 4.50, 62 candidates in 100 ask for one; at 4.80, 69 do; at 4.90, 74; at 4.95, 75.

At 5.00, six do.

Five hundredths of a point separate someone filling in a form from someone with nothing to ask for.

VII · What is visible

A measurement written to two decimals that moves by tenths

A baccalaureate grade carries every sign of a measurement: two decimals, two independent readings, an arithmetic mean without rounding. The 2024 figures show that when the same paper reaches two other teachers a second time, the number changes in 95 cases out of 100, and half of the changes are of at least three tenths. The decimals describe more precision than the procedure behind them can deliver.

Around one single value, the mechanism behaves unlike anywhere else on the scale. The grade that separates a diploma from its absence is also the most frequent grade in the exam, and the steps beneath it thin out as they draw closer to it. The same landscape shows up at the first marking, at the second, in both sessions and in every one of the 42 counties, most gently in Buzău, where 5.00 comes up four times as often as 4.95, and most sharply in Caraș-Severin, where it comes up sixteen times as often.

For a student looking at a grade between 4.50 and 4.95, the practical conclusion is simple: that grade moves, and in 2024 it moved up more often than down. For one looking at a 5.00, all that can be said is that they landed on the step that holds the most people.