State Council reaffirms: 2023 Medicine tests valid

The Council of State, in a ruling issued yesterday, ordered the annulment of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court ruling that in January had scrapped the entrance tests for Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine for the 2023/2024 academic year, jeopardising the enrolment of thousands of students for the following year.

The judgement of the Regional Administrative Court had ruled that the scoring criterion provided for by the competition regulations, so-called "equalised" because it was distorting, was illegitimate insofar as it did not ensure a homogenous evaluation of the tests and therefore a selection of competitors according to merit criteria. By "equalised" score we mean the score of the test administered to the candidate equal to the sum of the points for the answers given to the 50 questions of which the test is composed with the additional score determined on the basis of the equalisation coefficient of the test. The purpose of the test equalisation coefficient is to measure the difficulty of the test in view of the possibility for candidates to retake the tests.

The annulment of the Tar's pronouncement is announced with satisfaction by the firm Police & Partners, which assisted a number of applicants. The Council of State thus reaffirmed what it had already decided in early August in a ruling issued on the occasion of an appeal by other candidates. The ruling also confirms the full right of fourth-graders, with useful marks in the 2023 tests, to enter the 2024-25 rankings, as established by the original Mur announcement and then subsequently confirmed by the legislature at the proposal of the ministry led by Anna Maria Bernini.

The Ministry of Universities has announced that the Council of State's ruling confirms the absolute legitimacy of the Mur's work, since it establishes that the competition procedures were carried out correctly, in compliance with the law, and are therefore fully valid. Satisfaction is also expressed by Cisia, the Inter-University Consortium that had prepared the tests: "It is a very important ruling for the university system but also for the public selection system," comments Andrea Stella, Cisia president. "The Council of State's decision confirms the full legitimacy of the enrolment of candidates who have already obtained their test results in 2023 and restores serenity to the students who have enrolled in the meantime. At the same time, the decision reaffirms the full legitimacy of the Cisia (Tolc) OnLine Tests and marks a new point of contention for the Council of State, which in these very weeks is discussing measures to overcome the closed number also in the faculties of Medicine," comment lawyers Aristide Police and Paul Simon Falzini.