Tokyo's education bureau chief apologized Wednesday for more than 2,000 cases of scoring errors on high school entrance examinations for the past two academic years, which resulted in erroneously rejecting 18 successful applicants.
"I apologize from the bottom of my heart to successful applicants who were wrongly rejected, their parents, relevant junior high school officials and the public," Hideto Hiruma, director general of the bureau, said in front of public high school principals gathered at the metropolitan government building.
The bureau announced Tuesday it found 1,139 cases of scoring errors on high school entrance exams at 146 schools for 2014 and 1,072 cases at 109 schools for 2013 following the reinvestigation of the problem, which was first reported in April.