The O-Net and A-Net scores will be ready for most candidates by Tuesday, officials said yesterday, as students who just completed secondary school continue their anxious wait for the scores that universities will use to decide whom to admit.

Scores from the open-ended sections will be ready tomorrow, the National Institute of Education Testing Service (NIETS) said.

They will then be combined with the scores from the multiple-choice sections, Office of the Higher Education Commission (Ohec) secretary-general Pavich Thongroj said yesterday.

The O-Net (Ordinary National Educational Test) and A-Net (Advanced National Educational Test) scores are being used to decide university admission for the first time this year. Earlier this month the NIETS twice voided the scores it had announced due to many errors.

Pavich said some 20,000 answer sheets remained unmatched to test-takers because of incomplete identification information.

"It will take more time to sort this out. We should have the scores ready for most candidates by April 25," he said. Authorities are scheduled to announce the official O-Net and A-Net scores on April 30.

In a related development, the Office of Basic Education Commission (Obec) yesterday said it was legally possible to re-grade the scores of students who completed Grade 12 before the 2005 academic year.

However, it remained to be seen whether the re-grading would take place because some schools may not have kept records of the students' raw scores - the necessary information.

"We are checking how many students still have records of their raw scores and how many don't, and we will study the impact from a re-grading before we forward the relevant information to [caretaker] Education Minister Chaturon Chaisang for a decision," Obec senior official Suchart Wongsuwan said yesterday.

A number of students have been demanding that their scores from secondary-education years be re-graded into eight categories: 0, 1, 1.5, 2 and so on to 4. The eight categories of grading are applied to students who completed their secondary education in the 2005 academic year.

Previously, there were only five categories: 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Some students who completed their education before the 2005 academic year feel threatened because officials this year raised the weighting of their grades from their final years at secondary school.

Although most students go to universities in the year following their completion of secondary education, some wait a year, or even a few years, to improve their chances of getting into their first choice of university.

The students who have deferred their university applications now want their tests re-graded according to the new system, lest they be disadvantaged.