Newspaper “Vesria”
June 3-6
Minimum Competency Level was defined for the School Leaving Exams
Nino Barabadze
Minimum Competency Level has been defined for the School Leaving Exams. Minimum Competency for all subjects is 5.5.
Proceeding from the fact, that the school leaving exams were organized for the first time in Georgia, all schoolchildren who got minimum 5.2 points in any three subjects and 5.5 points in other 5 subjects have passed the exams.
Schoolchildren of non-Georgian schools passed the exams in their native languages: Russian, Armenian, Azeri. As Georgian language is not the native language for the schoolchildren of non-Georgian schools, by the decree of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia minimum competency level in Georgian Language for these schoolchildren is 5.1.
By the announcement of the Minister this precedent will not be used in the next year’s school leaving exams. The next year, the minimum competency level for all subjects will be 5.5 point. Minimum competency level in Georgian Language exam for the schoolchildren of non-Georgian schools will be 5.3.
The exams were held at the examinations centers of 1520 schools across Georgia. The process of the exams was monitored with the central server and audio equipments at the Data Processing Center of the Ministry.
As to the schoolchildren’s attitude to the exam and to the tasks of the test showed, according to their announcements, the test tasks were quite easy.
In case if the schoolchild had missed the one of the exams by the objective reason, he has the chance to take those exams at National Examination Center on June 2, 3.
The schoolchildren who studied in USA with the FLEX program will take school leaving exams at National Examination Center from June 6 till June 11.
The exams were held in 8 subjects: Georgian Language and Literature, Foreign Languages (upon choice); Math, History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
School leaving exams was organized in the format of Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT). The system envisaged the testing adapted on the schoolchild’s abilities. Such kind of testing is approved in many countries of the world. The exams held in Georgia gave the equal conditions of testing to every schoolchild. The schoolchildren had one day of exam for each subject and all 12th graders were able to take an exam at their schools during several sessions. The program was assessing the knowledge of the schoolchildren individually. Duration of each session was 1 hour and 40 minutes but there were some schoolchildren who had finished their tasks in 15 minutes.
Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia and National Examinations Center had been undertaking the preparatory works for the exams for the whole year: “Abituri hours “ were launched at schools, which gave the schoolchildren opportunity to get prepared for each exam; all schools had been provided with internet access and had been supplied with the computers and modern technical facilities, IT specialists had been selected based on the open competition , they provided a technical support to the exams.