Passing the school-leaving exam cancels the decision not to admit the candidate to the exam

The Milan Regional Administrative Court (judgement 2214/2026) has settled one of the most common disputes in the education sector: when a student, initially excluded from the school-leaving examination, is admitted subject to conditions and passes the state examination, the class council’s previous decision no longer has any effect. The school-leaving certificate is valid.

According to the Regional Administrative Court, once the state examination has been passed, the principle of absorption comes into play, whereby the positive assessment given by the examination board ‘absorbs’ the negative assessment previously issued by the class council.

The reason is that both measures are designed to assess the student’s overall readiness, but the examination board’s assessment constitutes the final and definitive assessment required by law for the award of the diploma.

The examination board, in fact, makes an overall assessment of the candidate’s knowledge and skills after evaluating the written papers and the interview. It is therefore a more comprehensive and conclusive assessment than the decision not to admit a candidate, which is merely a preparatory stage on the path towards the state examination.

For this reason, once the student has obtained their qualification, there is no longer any practical interest in having the previous exclusion order set aside. Even though the appeal had been lodged lawfully, the subsequent award of the qualification removes the practical purpose of a decision on the merits of the dispute. Hence the conclusion of the Lombardy court, which declared the appeal inadmissible on the grounds of lack of interest arising subsequently and ordered the payment of legal costs.