This year’s central school leaving exams, due to start on May 7, have been cancelled, education minister Arie Slob announced on Tuesday morning.

Schools will now have to award their final marks to school leavers on the basis of course work and exams organised by the schools themselves, Slob said.

‘We are asking a lot of teachers at the moment, and pupils want to be properly prepared for their exams,’ Slob said. ‘This far-reaching measure brings clarity. I want to give all pupils the opportunity to get a proper school leaving certificate and to be able to move on to further education without delay.’

The main secondary school organisations had already called on the government to scrap the exams, saying it would be impossible to organise them in a safe way, given the new measures introduced on Monday to reduce the spread of coronavirus.

The minister said he would soon announce what the options are for pupils who fail their school leaving certificate and need to do re-sits.

The government announced earlier this month that primary school final year tests were being scrapped.

Children will now be allocated a secondary school stream purely on the basis of teachers’ assessments. Dutch pupils are streamed at the age of 12 into pre-college, pre-university and vocational training.