The year 2026 brought a significant change to the secondary school admissions process in Slovakia. For the first time, a centralized evaluation engine within the ePrihlášky system was used nationwide to assess admissions applications.
The result? After the first round, 49,657 students secured a place at a secondary school, and as many as 80% were admitted to the school they had selected as their first choice. Without the new evaluation method, more than 10,000 students would have remained without a placement after the first round and would have had to continue through additional stages of the admissions process.
Our role was to conduct an independent verification of the correctness of the evaluation engine’s implementation without building a second, duplicate version of the entire solution. The foundation of our approach is the Deferred Acceptance Algorithm, also known in connection with Gale and Shapley. It works with the ranking of applicants determined by schools and the students’ preferences, ensuring that each student is assigned to the highest-preference school for which they meet the admission requirements.
Our Business Consulting team identified and applied the appropriate rules for the independent verification of the evaluation engine’s output.
Behind the algorithms, data, and information systems in this case are tens of thousands of real decisions shaping the educational paths of young people.
These are the kinds of projects that give our work real meaning.
