Central News Agency (CNA Taipei, June 30) A college admissions advisory platform, "College Access," has compiled statistics showing that since the abolition of grade repetition in high schools, graduation rates have been declining annually. In the 2025 academic year, approximately 10% of students did not receive their diplomas. The Ministry of Education emphasizes that high schools operate on a credit system, allowing students to retake courses they failed. Curriculum standards have not been relaxed. In the past, senior high school (including vocational schools) students who failed half of their credits in any academic year were forced to repeat the grade. However, starting from the 2014 academic year, the "Regulations for Learning Assessment of Senior High School Students" changed the requirement from "must repeat" to "may repeat," marking the end of mandatory grade repetition. "College Access" analyzed the number of third-year high school students in the first semester of each academic year and the number of graduates in the same academic year. They found that in the 2012 academic year, before the abolition of grade repetition, the high school graduation rate was 97.4%, with only 6,681 students not graduating. After the abolition of grade repetition in the 2014 academic year, the graduation rate declined at a rate of 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points annually. By the 2025 academic year, the graduation rate had fallen to 90.3%, with 16,510 students not graduating. Wei Jia-hui, CEO of "College Access," told CNA in an interview that even without a diploma, students can still use certificates of completion and other documents to apply for higher education based on equivalent academic ability. Many high school teachers have found it increasingly difficult to require students to complete their credits, especially in the second semester of the third year, when many students are no longer focused on classes. Wei Jia-hui stated that many advanced and in-depth courses in the thi