A decision to fail more than 250 first-year commerce students at the University of Malta is to be reevaluated with a new board, said the Dean of the Faculty of Economics Frank Bezzina. 

“We are looking into the decision, and I am setting up a new board to re-evaluate the information we have to finalise a better way forward.”

On Monday it was reported that the faculty had informed students that they would receive no marks for Progress Test 1 after it transpired that some of them cheated their way through two tests that formed part of one study unit.

In an email sent to all first-year students, the faculty said it had more than 43 screenshots from a Facebook Messenger chat to prove “the collusion.”

The email stated that students would be able to resit the test, but would only be granted a pass mark at best.

The University's student council, KSU, had criticised the faculty's decision to fail all students as "unjust". 

Bezzina said that the new board would go over the information provided to the previous one, which he said he did not form a part of.

"Today I will be putting together a new board to ensure that the students who were innocent do not have to fail and that it will be a fairer decision," he said.

Bezzina said he did not have the exact number of how many students cheated.

“The exact number I do not know, but we are re-evaluating the screenshots sent and looking into the person who sent these screenshots in the first place,” he explained.

“If we only had 20 or 30 students, it would have been easier to contain and evaluate, but here we have enormous classes.”

He said that he will be informing ASCS, the representative organisation for Bachelor of Commerce students, about the decision.