China's top education watchdog has ordered a vast recount of college entrance exam scores in 15 provinces, Beijing Youth Daily reported on Thursday.

The 15 unnamed provinces all used the same computer software for scoring as Anhui Province, which late Tuesday reported errors in marking on a liberal arts subject.

The software, developed by Shenzhen-based Sea Skyland Technologies Co Ltd, has since received nothing but confirmations or reliability. Nevertheless, China's Ministry of Education, wanting to leave no room for doubt, ordered a full re-count to quell the rapidly-beating hearts of local students.

The newspaper reported that the ministry had not so far received any reports about marking errors in the large probe.

Anhui Province's education committee has issued an apology to its 264,000 arts students who sat this year's entrance exam. The incident revolved around the 39th question of the ability test paper for liberal arts -- worth 32 points out of a total 300 -- which was apparently left uncounted.

Technicians failed to key in six bytes of the software, said Cheng Yi, director of the provincial committee, adding that the mistake came to light after a slew of complaints from students and parents who saw a major disparity between actual and expected results.

The recalculated scores were released to students on Wednesday while several universities raised their admission mark levels by 12 to 14 points. Anhui students will also have to wait until Sunday to register their desired university choices, four days later than their peers nationwide.

Senior officials with the committee admitted that "relevant exam workers are to blame because they failed to find and correct the error in time."

(Shanghai Daily June 28, 2007)