According to Koka Seperteladze school leaving exams are being conducted without any complications throughout Georgia. The State guarantees that unified national examinations will be conducted smoothly and in correspondence with higher standards. The first Deputy Minister explained that disagreement between Dimitri Shashkini and Maia Miminoshvili was caused by dissenting opinions on the following issues:
- The Ministry offered establishment of convenient environment for teachers during testing and teacher certification examinations which was strongly opposed by Maia Miminoshvili;
- Reforms in the field of education are being carried out by the Ministry in irreversible mode. Upon completion of a certain phase the Ministry has been planning to introduce American model of examinations and implement transition to 8 + 1 model that implies school leaving exams in 8 subjects plus 1 exam in general ability test which as well was drastically rejected by Ms. Miminoshvili;
- Disagreement in opinions was caused regarding issuance of school leaving diplomas to ethnic minority students giving them free choice to continue their study abroad;
The head of a press center of the Ministry, Ms. Nino Potrjebskaya confimed the information disseminated by the information agency ONN on the disagreement between the Minister and Ms. Miminoshvili. She admitted that the parties were in dispute for ten month. As Ms. Potrjebskaya mentions: “the Minister exercised all possible measures to avoid such decision”.
As a matter of fact Ms. Miminoshvili has been approached with different proposals by the Government of Georgia. She has been suggested to take one of the responsible posts at the Ministry of Health or acquire a post of a head of the diplomatic mission in one of the European countries. All the proposals offered by the Government have been refused by Ms. Miminoshvili. Due to complications to reconcile the positions, the Minister was urged to make the above mentioned tough decision.