SANA’A, Sept. 5 – Shukri Al-Hamami, the examinations general manager at the Ministry of Education, said the publication of secondary and primary school test results via mobile was due to technical defects on the ministry website.

The ministry prevented the publication of the results on the website this year. Students could learn their results by mobile phone, at a cost.

Al-Hamami said the ministry does not attempt to make money by publishing results by phone—receiving results by mobile costs 20 riyals. However, some Yemenis accuse the ministry of intentionally adopting this way for the purpose of gaining monetary benefits from students. Ninth graders this year numbered 311,714; the ministry reaped more than 12 million riyals from them.

In the past, the ministry has published the results of the primary and secondary school exams on its website.

Al-Hamami said publishing results by mobile is much better than by Internet because many areas in Yemen have no Internet access. If the Internet is available, then students are manipulated when they want to know their results, he said.

“The results publication costs 20 riyals by phone; the cost from the Internet is double.”

Some Yemenis criticize the ministry for limiting the results to mobile access. Criticisms of the ministry are an exaggeration and are because the ministry is pro-revolution, Al-Hamami said.

Basim Al-Husseini, a student at Aden University, said the Ministry of Education suffers from huge corruption. “It was supposed the ministry would publish the results on the website. It published on the mobile phone to earn millions of riyals in cooperation with the telecommunication companies.”

Al-Hamami said the Ministry of Education contacted the top students through its offices nationwide, congratulating them on their excellence.

He said the ministry is willing to consider any complaints students make about their results. With regard to the top students, he said they made sure of their marks in the past two years. The ministry found that their marks were high except for one student.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Education released the results for secondary school students, one week following the publication for ninth grade students.

The ministry said the percentage of success reached to 82.45 percent.

Azan Ghalib, a secondary school graduate, expressed his satisfaction about his results, 85 percent.

“I expected to obtain this mark before the publication of the results.”

Minister of Education Dr. Abdurazaq Al-Ashwal said the number of secondary school students—both scientific and literary tracked—reached to 202,781; 154,400 passed.