Dozens of law students had to wait until yesterday – the day lectures started – to be told whether they had graduated to fourth year or had to repeat the year.

The results were published mid-afternoon, several hours after the Maltese branch of the European Law Students’ Association (Elsa) sent a press release calling the situation “appalling”.

Elsa said the deadline for the University to publish resit results was last Friday and yet no reason for the delay of the Law of Obligations result was given.

“It is utterly unacceptable that with fourth-year lectures starting today, such a large number of third-year law students are still in the dark about whether they should attend lectures or not.”

When contacted, the University communications office told The Times in the afternoon that the results had all been published. “I would like to point out that lecturers are bound by the collective agreement to submit their results by September 30. It is not that the results must be published for students by September 30,” a University spokesman said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Elsa said the results should have been published early because it was not fair on students to be left in the dark for so long, unsure about whether to attend the first lectures or not. She added that such delays had become a recurring problem.

In fact, A level students recently also complained of not having received their resit results with only days left to spare before the start of the academic year. The results were finally published on the day applications for the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology were set to close. But social democrat organisation Pulse, which highlighted the issue, said exceptions were made for the few students whose results did not arrive on the day.