Headmasters that are supposed to organise the May 13 2008 national-level external evaluation tests in Bulgarian literature and grammar for 4th and 5th graders were faced with serious problems in doing so, the headmaster of a school in the Sofia region told The Sofia Echo on May 12.

The tests are supposed to start at 10am. For fear of any leaks headmasters were given CDs with the tests in advance, but without the password for accessing them.

"We are supposed to get the password at 9.30am and open the CDs, which means that we would have about 30 minutes to look at the tests and print them out for every student. The problem is that I have just been informed that there was a problem with the password. It appears that it does not work with the CDs," the headmaster told The Sofia Echo.

"I was told that I would get further information on my e-mail tomorrow morning before the test. Another thing I was told by the Ministry of Education is that I will have to access one of the websites created for the test, named mon4 and mon5.

"The problem is that I could not find them even by using Google search engine and even if they exists I can't even imagine what would happen tomorrow when hundreds of school headmasters will try to access those website in the same time.

"It is chaos. For us this means that we probably won't be bale to start the tests in the required time at 10am," he said.

The Sofia Echo also failed to find such websites under the name mon4 or mon5. Contacted by The Sofia Echo, ministry officials were not available for comment.

This year's tests for 4th and 5th graders were announced in April. They will take place on May 13-20. On May 13, the ministry will hold the test on Bulgarian literature and grammar, followed by the mathematics test on May 14, natural sciences on May 15, history of civilisation on May 16, geography on May 17 and a foreign language on May 20.

All tests start at 10am, with fourth-graders given 40 minutes to complete the examination, while fifth-graders will have 45 minutes. The tests for fourth-graders has 20 multiple choice questions and a dictation, while fifth-graders will face 25 questions and will have to retell a short story in their own words.

The maximum score fourth-graders can get is 20 points, while fifth-graders can hope for a maximum result of 25 points. The tests will not be evaluated by the teachers themselves and will not affect the overall performance of the pupils.