The Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment (UCEQA) has recently determined what our teachers can do and know. It held training seminars for teachers in one of the regions of Ukraine, offering them to undergo External Independent Assessment (EIA) tests that were used from 2008 through 2012. The purpose of the seminars, as explained by the UCEQA, was providing methodological assistance to teachers in preparation for the EIA. Almost 70 percent of teachers employed by schools of the region took part in them. They offered tests in the Ukrainian language and literature, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and English. In general, these are subjects most popular with school graduates undergoing the EIA. UCEQA director Ihor Likarchuk made results of the experiment public and called them shocking.
“The main results are as follows: no more than 5 percent of teachers correctly completed all test tasks. In particular, the chemistry rate was 4.7 percent, that of physics 3.9 percent, Ukrainian language and literature 3,8 percent, mathematics 2.9 percent, biology 1.6 percent, English 0.8 percent. In 29 local authorities of the region, no teacher of English was able to complete all the tasks correctly, and the figure was 28 for biology, and 25 for mathematics. As much as 76 teachers participating in the seminars were unable to complete over 25 percent of tasks,” Likarchuk noted.
This problem is not limited to just one region in which these trainings were held, it applies to all regions. Likarchuk called the situation a great debacle, requiring intervention of the Ministry of Education and Science (MES). Previously, the UCEQA discovered another, no less important, secondary education drawback by comparing EIA certificates of school graduates with their school completion certificates, particularly of those who have received medals for excellence at school. Accordingly, they should have been able to complete all tasks of the EIA with ease. The comparison revealed, however, that the graduates’ medals were not supported by their actual knowledge levels (only 9 percent of awardees, who numbered 20,000, proved their knowledge levels and gained the highest scores during the EIA). It is no secret that many parents are willing to pay money for a good score, enabling their child to get a medal and additional admission benefits at college. We are now facing consequences of this behavior.
These figures are likely to become another argument that the MES should start developing a reform project for the secondary school, for the deficiencies of the current system have been increasingly visible. Teachers themselves did not mince words in their criticism of the teacher testing affair. Some have even dared to name the region that was used for the experiment, because the UCEQA decided to keep this information confidential lest the situation be aggravated further. So, to go by social network user Serhii Lymonov’s information, the experiment was held in Kharkiv region. He also described the conditions under which these trainings were held: “...They brought us there to hold a methodological workshop, and then forced into offices and made us undergo (sometimes intimidated into undergoing) EIA testing. We had just 40 minutes to complete the EIA tasks in a cold dark room, with test papers that were poorly printed, sometimes even unreadable in places or lacking clearly designated answer spaces. Strangely, they are now shocked with the outcome.”
There is another opinion among educators: when hiring a teacher, nobody cares about their level of knowledge, especially in small provincial towns with understaffed schools. No one holds professional interviews or tests, including EIA tasks, for example. Of course, all teachers differ, but if you are confident in your knowledge, why would you fear such tests? What we have now is a heated debate within the education profession, as many of them accuse the MES and the UCEQA of forcing teachers to undergo assessments while their own officials do not undergo any. In order not to bring a deadlock about, some people are advising to combine the national school completion assessment (NSCA) and the EIA in a single process, for the NSCA has been gradually becoming a formality, with its scores not corresponding to the real knowledge levels of the students.
“We have to change the system of parallel schooling in high school, when preparing for the EIA is one process, while completing school is a very different, parallel process,” chairperson of the MES’s Public Council Halyna Usatenko maintains. “I can confirm Likarchuk’s opinion on the teacher assessment results from personal experience, because my child is now in grade 11. They have one teacher giving Ukrainian language and literature lessons on Mondays and Wednesdays, and another, ostensibly more competent, teaching so-called EIA preparation electives on Fridays. Meanwhile, most parents and students would prefer the two teachers to swap places. Accordingly, many speak of the need to combine the NSCA and the EIA, it could have at least somehow solved the problem of parallelism, and those teachers who are not able to prepare students for the EIA would be forced to brush up on their knowledge. The great burden will then be placed on continuing education institutes, and the teachers themselves should become more responsible as well. These facts reinforce the need for systemic change in the situation.”
Deputy Minister of Education Pavlo Poliansky previously noted that the MES was pondering how to reform secondary education and what to do with the EIA and the NSCA. He promised that the ministry would hold discussions with the public and experts for this purpose, for neither current nor future teachers are best qualified to make a fair assessment. Experiments in secondary education were postponed in the spring of 2014 because of the military operations in eastern Ukraine. We will see what changes officials will make over this school year.
