Denmark Makes Oral Defense Mandatory for Every At-Home Written Exam, Effective Immediately, Plus Screen Monitoring and Exam Firewalls

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Denmark's Ministry of Education announced on August 7, 2026 that all upper-secondary students must verbally defend written work produced at home, with the rule in force immediately and covering the ~9,000 students in the two-year Higher Preparatory Examination program. The package also asks schools to monitor student screens during exams, deploy a content-filtering firewall, require explicit AI-use declarations on major assignments, and keep oral-exam preparation AI-free. Three school organizations representing leaders, teachers, and students welcomed the move but called it insufficient given the pace of the technology — the HN thread drew 582 points and 258 comments.