A 22-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the leaking of this year’s school final French exam, which forced thousands of pupils to take the test a day later.

It is unclear what connection the man had to the Rotterdam school where the paper was apparently stolen, but officials said he was not a member of staff.

The exam papers were kept in a safe at the Ibn Ghaldoun school in Rotterdam, where the French exam was due to be taken by 12 pupils. The seal of one packet of papers had been broken, prompting staff to report the incident to the police.

Holidays

Some 17,000 pre-university pupils were forced to take the exam a day later, missing post-exam parties and flights to the traditional end-of-exam holidays in Mediterranean resorts.

It is not clear how many pupils went on holiday instead of taking the test, pinning their hopes instead on the re-sit later this summer.

Meanwhile, RTL news reports that insurance companies and tour operators have taken a flexible approach to pupils forced to miss their flight because of the delayed exam.

‘Nobody had expected this to happen,’ Gerard ten Brincke, director of insurance company De Europeesche, told the broadcaster. ‘We had so many phone calls that we felt we had to do something.’