Students sitting for their German O-level oral exam on Wednesday were forced to wait for over an hour and a half after some examiners failed to show up.

Sources who spoke to this newspaper said that students sitting for the exam, the first in a series on the subject, were instructed to go to St Theresa College in Birkirkara where the exam was to be held at 4pm.

Instead, the students waited outside the classrooms for over an hour and a half as some of the examiners failed to turn up.

The candidates assigned to those examiners were later distributed between the remaining examiners and this lead to the 90-minuted delay.

“The whole situation was ridiculous. The students were waiting anxiously to get the exam over and done with and instead they were forced to sit and wait for over an hour and a half, not knowing what’s going on,” a student’s parent told this newspaper, adding that the students who had to wait complained their concentration was disrupted.

Contacted about the claims, Dario Pirotta, the director of the Matriculation and Secondary Education Certificate, Matsec examinations board support unit, said that no reports were received by the board.

“From our investigations it transpires that there were no significant delays,” Mr Pirotta said.

Questions were also sent to the Education Ministry which said the matter should be referred to the University communications office, which works in tandem with the Matsec board.

The examinations began early last month and will go on until the end of May.