Unified State Exam
The future of the unified state examination is again in the focus of the Russians' attention. Starting from next year, rules will be changed fundamentally as it is planned to remove tests from examination procedures and bring back oral exams. This prospect, as everything linked with the examination, evokes absolutely opposite assessments. Some opinions say the experiment of a unified exam has actually failed.
By 2015, part of tests making block A will have been removed. In this section, examinees should choose one answer from four options, Russian Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov said recently. Meanwhile, it is planned to introduce an oral task in all humanities and shift from a written form to a fully electronic format.
The unified exam are secondary education graduation and university entrance tests taken in almost all subjects at all secondary schools. There are few domestic political issues in Russia that have been discussed so heatedly and for such a long time. Debate over whether tests are needed in the unified exam or whether the traditional system of exams that existed before is better has not subsided since 2001, when the unified exam was introduced. Talks became particularly acute in 2008 when the unified procedure was put into practice in all Russian regions.
Scandals over scribbling with use of electronic gadgets, leaking test tasks to the Internet before the exam, violating exam procedures and summarizing exam results have flared up permanently. Absolutely different opinions are being voiced over expected changes.
“Full cancellation of testing tasks may result in the reliability of exam results being distorted,” says Oxana Reshetnikova, director of the Federal Institute of Pedagogical Measurements, developers of the unified test.
Literature teacher and member of the Public Council of the Ministry of Education and Science Sergei Volkov, cited by online news edition Gazeta.ru, called the future abolition of tests “a bolt from the blue”
By 2015, part of tests making block A will have been removed. In this section, examinees should choose one answer from four options, Russian Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Livanov said recently. Meanwhile, it is planned to introduce an oral task in all humanities and shift from a written form to a fully electronic format.
The unified exam are secondary education graduation and university entrance tests taken in almost all subjects at all secondary schools. There are few domestic political issues in Russia that have been discussed so heatedly and for such a long time. Debate over whether tests are needed in the unified exam or whether the traditional system of exams that existed before is better has not subsided since 2001, when the unified exam was introduced. Talks became particularly acute in 2008 when the unified procedure was put into practice in all Russian regions.
Scandals over scribbling with use of electronic gadgets, leaking test tasks to the Internet before the exam, violating exam procedures and summarizing exam results have flared up permanently. Absolutely different opinions are being voiced over expected changes.
“Full cancellation of testing tasks may result in the reliability of exam results being distorted,” says Oxana Reshetnikova, director of the Federal Institute of Pedagogical Measurements, developers of the unified test.
Literature teacher and member of the Public Council of the Ministry of Education and Science Sergei Volkov, cited by online news edition Gazeta.ru, called the future abolition of tests “a bolt from the blue”