When will school testing be canceled? Will the Unified State Exam be cancelled: pros and cons

Every year before the Unified State Exam, preparation for the exams is mixed with rumors about its cancellation. Any changes made to the exam format immediately generate speculation among ordinary people, giving graduates hope that the Unified State Exam will be cancelled. Both parents and graduates want to know whether the Unified State Exam will be canceled in 2019 or whether the exam will still take place.

Reasons for cancellation rumors

Initially, the state examination program evoked more positive emotions among many teachers. The introduction of the Unified State Exam freed teachers from independently preparing examination materials and checking submitted work. At the same time, teachers were forced to strengthen control over the full mastery of the curriculum by schoolchildren.

After only 2-3 years, the examination system began to be criticized not only by students and their parents - teachers also expressed their dissatisfaction. The imperfection of the knowledge assessment system was obvious to everyone, especially to teachers who knew the real capabilities of their graduates. High levels of stress and objectively incorrect assignments deprived worthy students of good grades.

Every year the wave of dissatisfaction grew - teachers loudly claimed that there were inaccuracies in tests and incorrect scores for strong and weak students. There were even attempts to go to court to cancel this exam format. Constant dissatisfaction with the features of the final certification of school graduates’ knowledge on the part of various people involved in the educational process has led to the regular appearance of rumors about the cancellation of this exam format. At the same time, such speculation is fueled by the Ministry of Education itself - the Unified State Exam is modified every year, which allows many to think that sooner or later this exam format will become obsolete.

Will the Unified State Exam be cancelled?

Both the previous and the current Minister of Education are of the same opinion on the issue of the format of the examination of school graduates. When asked whether the Unified State Examination will be canceled in 2019, they both answer in the negative. The state has invested a lot of money in the development and implementation of a full-scale assessment of schoolchildren's knowledge, so there are no plans to cancel it.

It's not just about the financial investment in this exam format - for all its shortcomings, it has a couple of obvious advantages. Both advantages are very significant, but because of them there is no need to completely change the format of knowledge assessment. We are talking about such things:

Reducing the level of corruption in schools.
Real increase in knowledge among graduates.

Now, to obtain a certificate you need at least minimal knowledge, and buying annual grades for your children loses its meaning. Passing the exam only with “your” teachers allowed you to slightly increase your final grade for a certain fee. Now it is much more difficult to implement this - observers and teachers from other schools will not allow prompting the correct answers to careless students.

As a result, schoolchildren are forced to actually start studying, without trying to “get” a good grade through the efforts of their parents. At the same time, education officials annually analyze the shortcomings of the system, changing it, which further contributes to the more active acquisition of knowledge by schoolchildren. Therefore, you should not expect that the Unified State Examination will be canceled in 2019 - the exam will take place, although once again it will slightly change its form.

Modernizing the Exam Format

In fact, the unified state exam is becoming less and less similar to the original version every year. The main changes are considered to be the departure from the planned test examination. Every year, the tests were subjected to severe criticism, modernized and slowly lost their ground. The test part of the Unified State Examination is gradually decreasing, but this does not mean that the exam itself will be abolished.

There is no need to guess whether the Unified State Exam will be canceled in 2019 or some other year - there will be a unified state exam, only in a new form. Changing the format both makes the exam easier and more difficult. It will be easier for worthy students to confirm their level thanks to detailed written and oral answers, while careless students will have to try to somehow pass the exam and receive a certificate. Although they also make concessions for them, allowing them to retake exams.

A heated debate on the topic of changes in the education system is the question: “Will the Unified State Exam be canceled in 2017?” Moreover, it is asked not only by schoolchildren, but also by their parents. Over the entire existence of the unified state test of knowledge, it has acquired a huge number of dissatisfied citizens complaining about the complexity of the exam and the biased reflection of the student’s true knowledge. Moreover, the future applicant is no less worried before taking the Unified State Exam than when writing it. This factor may negatively affect the number of points received.

Rumor about canceling the Unified State Exam: myth or truth?

Initially, the Unified State Exam was introduced as an experiment in 2009. However, numerous disputes related to the rationality of introducing a unified state exam have not subsided to this day. A huge number of citizens of the Russian Federation are skeptical and disapproving of the innovation, not perceiving it as a real test of knowledge. Many oppose the introduction of a state examination system, considering the Soviet school one of the best.

There is a lot of talk in the media and on the Internet about the cancellation of the Unified State Exam. Among similar topics in discussions, the question is raised: “Will the unified state exam in mathematics be abolished?” After all, already in 2014, a statement was submitted stating the intention to exclude the exam in mathematics, not considering it as a compulsory subject.

However, Rosobrnadzor issued a statement and denied the spread of such rumors. Mathematics occupies a priority position when testing the knowledge of schoolchildren in exactly the same way as the Russian language. As evidence, Rosobrnadzor provided the following positive aspects of the Unified State Exam, indicating the advisability of such an assessment of students’ knowledge:

Elimination of corruption and bribery in the education system, namely in schools. The applicant is given a wide choice - to send the results of his Unified State Examination to selected universities in anticipation of admission;
Knowledge testing, including basic material on all topics of the subject;
Unification of the general education system of the Unified State Exam, based on uniform standards. For schoolchildren there is no psychological pressure from teachers taking the exam;
Ease and transparency when entering other universities - an opportunity for future applicants to submit their Unified State Exam results to various faculties and universities. A comfortable position for schoolchildren without experiencing repeated stress when taking the exam.

According to the news on the Unified State Exam 2017, no one was going to cancel the exams. Every year, work is done to correct mistakes, CMM tasks are improved, and the rules for conducting the exam are tightened.

Where do the rumors about the cancellation of the Unified State Exam come from?

Approximately 80% of dissatisfied citizens of the Russian Federation with the new education system called the “Unified State Exam” made it possible to collect a huge number of signatures of unanimous opinion from residents. In connection with newly discovered circumstances, a bill proposing to cancel the Unified State Exam in the very near future has been submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation for consideration.

The media also began to add fuel to the fire, spreading false information on the Internet about the cancellation of the Unified State Exam. The proposals of the legislators were listened to. However, no action was taken. The final certification of the Unified State Exam continues to exist, despite the difficulties in studying and passing the exam.

Recently, more and more often you can come across rumors that the Unified State Exam is going to be cancelled. We tried to figure out where these assumptions come from, what should be considered true from this and what should current graduates prepare for.

Why are there rumors about the cancellation of the Unified State Exam?

The Unified State Exam has been criticized for a number of reasons. All of them can be reduced to several points.

The Unified State Exam is an impersonal process

Forms, electronic processing and the absence of a teacher are the main postulates of the Unified State Exam. But these are also reasons for doubt: it is difficult for “non-standard” applicants to break through such a system. As arguments, opponents of the Unified State Exam like to recall famous historical figures: Pushkin was one of the weakest students in the class, Chekhov stayed in his second year at the gymnasium twice, Mayakovsky could not finish reading Anna Karenina. Whether these geniuses could break through the formalized Unified State Exam system is a big question.

On the other hand, recently this claim has faded into the background, as the number of test tasks decreases, and the number of creative and oral tasks increases.

According to many students and their parents, the Unified State Exam becomes a source of continuous stress for the examinee. The pressure begins two years before graduation, when students are told about the importance of the exam and the consequences if they fail. In the graduating class, intensive preparation begins - a continuous sequence of school studies, visits to tutors and independent work at home. The stress does not go away even on the day of the exam: the monitoring system involves metal detectors, video surveillance and constant supervision.

And even after the exam has already been passed, it doesn’t get any easier: waiting for the Unified State Exam results takes from 6 to 12 days. To say that this is a period of painful waiting is to say nothing.

Breaking the rules

Despite the improvement in control over the examination, news of falsification of results surfaces from time to time. In addition, sometimes examinees still manage to sneak cheat sheets into the classroom, and sometimes they buy answers in advance or find them on the Internet. The exam, which is designed to equalize the opportunities for all schoolchildren to enter, works almost the opposite: due to loopholes, people with less knowledge can take the place of truly talented students.

Typical tasks kill the thought process

The cornerstone of the Unified State Examination is test tasks that can be memorized, memorized, and memorized. It turns out that the exam does not reveal the level of knowledge, but the ability to act according to a pattern. This negatively affects students even during the preparation process: schoolchildren try not to deepen their knowledge, but to earn the maximum score.

How the situation really is

All of the above shortcomings became the reason for fiery discussions in the Ministry of Education and Science and the State Duma. For more than five years, the Unified State Exam was conducted as an experiment and only then became mandatory everywhere. But even then, as the authors of the exam admit, the public was not ready for it.

Since then, many attempts have been made to abolish the Unified State Exam. In the previous year alone, two bills were put forward - from the Legislative Assembly of Corelia and the LDPR deputies.

Despite the fact that the government recognizes the shortcomings of the Unified State Exam, the idea of completely abandoning it is viewed with skepticism.

In turn, the Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Olga Vasilyeva spoke about the introduction of serious changes to the structure of the exam: as we mentioned above, the number of test tasks is reduced in favor of oral and creative ones. When asked whether ticketed exams will be returned, as was the case before the Unified State Exam, Vasilyeva answered unequivocally: “It won’t.”

What will happen if the Unified State Exam is canceled?

Although such a scenario is unlikely, no one forbids telling fortunes on coffee grounds. If the proposal to abolish the Unified State Exam still finds a response in the State Duma and Rosobrnadzor, we will have to think about possible alternatives. There are basically two of them.

The first is to cancel state exams in any form. And this is not a pipe dream of a hack, but a really functioning system: most French universities accept all school graduates without pre-selection. Screening, therefore, occurs already at the stage of studying at a university, based on the students’ performance.

The Sorbonne is one of the world's most famous universities, where you can enter without entrance exams

True, such a system is far from flawless: the pressing question of student accommodation arises. The dorms have a limited number of places, and local landlords don't like students - because of the cold weather law, you can't be evicted during the cold season, even if you haven't paid for housing. Where can I find a sufficient number of classrooms and teachers, how can I schedule classes so that everyone gets an equal number of teaching hours?

This has become a real scourge of the French education system, where people have already repeatedly doubted this approach. In addition, the “open door” rule does not apply to the most prestigious universities: they set their own selection rules, where passing the exam is often the key factor.

Thus, Russia is unlikely to be able to adopt the French path of education, but there is another option - to return to the system that operated successfully before the Unified State Exam. Then admission to a university took place in two stages: it was necessary to pass 5-8 exams at school, followed by several more exams at the university itself. At first glance, the workload of the exam period doubled, but there were some advantages.

Firstly, schools didn't force standardized test prep so students would memorize the same assignments over and over again. The tickets could contain anything - so the school program was much richer, and, accordingly, there was more knowledge.

Besides, a system in which the applicant passed exams “eye to eye” with the teacher, made it possible to prove his knowledge and justify his point of view if the examiner had doubts. The modern Unified State Exam allows this to be done only if the results are appealed - and this is a much more complex process, which, moreover, can backfire on the student if additional testing reveals more errors.

There were also some disadvantages. You couldn't just send school exam results to selected universities - you had to personally visit each one and take a passing test. This is not only a lot of exhausting running around, but also the obvious problem of accommodation: if a graduate chose a university in another city, he would have to spend money on travel, find a temporary place of residence - and hope that he will score the required score on the exam.

And the “eye to eye” technique could also misfire. If the examiner didn't like you, you risked getting a lower grade. This did not happen everywhere, but there were cases - the human factor has not been canceled.

What should graduates do?

The most obvious answer is to prepare for exams, because you won’t be able to avoid them in any case. offers a universal solution: we do not coach you to get the highest score on the Unified State Exam, we achieve a complete understanding of the material and work towards results. With the knowledge gained in our courses, you will not have any problems: no matter what type of exams await you, you will be ready for anything.

When preparing for the final test of knowledge, schoolchildren and their parents pay special attention to what form the test will take and how to best prepare for it. Many people start preparing several years in advance, considering question forms, assignment structure and all other important parameters. Such people are rightly interested in the question of whether the Unified State Examination will be replaced by another form of examination, even more so. that doubts about this are being expressed more and more often.

Information about the possible cancellation of the Unified State Exam in 2019 has been reported several times in the media. To determine how true this is and what graduates of 2019 can expect, you need to understand the official position of the Ministry of Education and the country’s government.

President's opinion

Since the issue is the most pressing for high school students, they were the first to voice it in the form of a video message during a direct line to the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin. He considered the question very important and interesting, so he expressed his opinion to a wide circle of listeners.

He pointed out that the decision is largely from education experts, and not from his personal point of view. But personally, he considers the introduction of the Unified State Exam into the Russian education system to be the right step, since it made it possible to equalize the chances of all applicants during the entrance campaign to higher educational institutions. The scores obtained from the Unified State Exam give the same chance of admission to both schoolchildren from cities and children from villages.

In addition, he emphasized that there are still many shortcomings in this system that are subject to constant adjustment. The improvement process has been going on for 10 years now, and there is no point in stopping it.

Position of the Ministry of Education and Science

Olga Vasilyeva, who currently holds the post of Head of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, also answered questions regarding the cancellation of the Unified State Exam in 2019. She gave a comprehensive answer in the summer of 2017 during a broadcast on the state television channel.

She noted that a lot of time, effort and finances were spent to implement the Unified State Exam system, which were necessary to launch the program. This approach has several advantages:

One-time testing, which serves as both a final and an entrance exam, which is an unconditional positive moment for applicants.
The number of applicants from the regions of the Russian Federation has increased at universities, which has a positive impact on the overall level of student preparedness, since talented schoolchildren from different regions can take part in the admissions campaign and receive an education on an equal basis with city graduates.
This approach is universal for different children, since it gives the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge to those who are prone to detail when answering, and to those who are at a loss from the need to explain their train of thought.
This form of entrance examination is an ideal platform to eradicate corruption schemes during admission.

Over the years of the Unified State Exam, the system has been refined, identified weaknesses have been eliminated, which has brought it closer to the model that will objectively reflect the level of knowledge acquired by the student in various subjects.

Vasilyeva also mentioned that the introduction of a new examination system to replace the Unified State Exam would require enormous funding and the work of a large number of education specialists in a direction in which satisfactory results have already been achieved. There is no practicality in such measures, so there is no talk of abolishing the established system in the coming years.

The head of the Ministry of Education and Science expressed the opinion that the main negative point is the focus of the knowledge acquired over the years of study solely on obtaining the highest score during the exam. This approach leads to a shift in the goal from the full-scale acquisition of knowledge at school, which can be applied in the future, to the immediate achievement of results. She believes that when schoolchildren and teachers get rid of such a preparation scheme, then most of the issues related to the structure and form of the Unified State Exam will be considered in a different plane.

Opponents of the Unified State Exam system

Conversations that the Unified State Exam will be canceled arose due to frequent speeches by opponents of the existing system, which are a sufficient number of teachers and teachers. They are joined by many representatives of universities, right up to the top officials of Russia in the scientific world and in the field of education.

The general opinion of opponents of the Unified State Exam was formulated by a professor at the Russian State University, who is an honored teacher of Russia - S. Rukshin. This statement has been sent for consideration by the President of Russia.

The appeal outlines the main negative aspects of the existing system of testing knowledge after leaving school:

Graduates often show an inability to understand the big picture on a particular topic, since education is entirely aimed at developing the ability of students to give single answers to test items.
Students do not make any effort to successfully master those parts of the program that are not included in the assignments. Despite gaps in knowledge, they can be highly rated.
The structure of the exams themselves is quite complex, which discourages children from enrolling in universities. Statistics have shown that since the introduction of the Unified State Exam, the number of people wishing to continue their studies in higher educational institutions has been steadily declining.
Final scores often force graduates to enroll in those educational institutions for which their score is passing. Such a system leads to the fact that a person does not acquire the specialty that he would like to receive.
Written and oral exams allow you to more deeply evaluate not only the student’s knowledge, but also his type of thinking.

The number of opponents of the Unified State Exam increases every year, so such appeals become more frequent every year.

Changes

Despite the fact that there is no talk of canceling this form of final exams in 2019, there will be a number of changes:

History will be added to the compulsory subjects, since this science is defined as a priority for Russian education.
Testing your knowledge of the Russian language will be supplemented by an oral part. The form in which this will be carried out is currently being discussed.
A foreign language will also be supplemented with an oral or written part.
Graduates will have the opportunity to retake the exam if they are not satisfied with the results of the first attempt. The time for retaking is limited to one academic year.

Since there is no reason to expect that the Unified State Exam will be canceled in 2019, it is worth considering preparing for the upcoming exams and, if necessary, finding a tutor or suitable aids.

The main indicator of the level of education is the fact that when preparing for final tests, excessive efforts are not required from the student: knowledge must already be acquired and organized. It is hoped that all the changes introduced will lead to exactly this result.

Video: Schoolchildren live asked Putin to cancel the Unified State Exam