Nearly half of all high school entrance exam test-takers in Shanxi province were forced to retake the English listening test on Sunday evening due to technical problems that occurred during the original Saturday morning session.

The Shanxi Provincial Admissions and Examination Management Center reported that malfunctions in some testing areas prevented the English listening content from playing correctly. As a result, the center issued an apology and organized a re-examination on Sunday for affected districts.

"Backup listening exam questions with the same difficulty level" were used to ensure fairness for the re-test, the center stated. A total of 183,800 students across 51 county-level areas, including major cities like Xinzhou, Shuozhou, and Datong, participated in the Sunday re-examination.

This incident comes as Shanxi sees a rise in high school entrance exam enrollment, with 381,896 students registered this year, a 25,380 increase compared to 2023. The province has allocated 12,735 testing rooms within 365 examination centers to accommodate the larger student body.