Observers monitor testing in Ukraine, while testers do this in Belarus

120628 Martin Testy.mp3

A booth near the BSU displays the results of the testing on the Russian and Belarusian languages. The mother of one of the applicants finds out that her daughter got 80 points. Lucky girl!

"She is going to enter the Belarusian state economic university. See, she passed her first exam having scored 80 points. It was the Russian language. She says it wasn't hard. However, one can check the rehearsal testing, but cannot check this one", - contemplates applicant's mother Iryna Mikhailauna.

"I got 56 points. In fact, it was what I expected. It wasn't too difficult but there were some moments which required deeper thinking", - says applicant Anton. He is going to enter the Belarusian National Technical University.

So, how can applicants see their mistakes in the testing? We ask this question to the Republican Institute for Knowledge Control.

"We publish all ten variants of the text under one cover after July 4. They can see their tests there. This is one element of the appeal. This is done before filing of the document so an applicant can see whether there is a mistake there. An applicant can also claim that a question is put incorrectly during the actual testing, and his complaint will be reflected in the protocol", - says director of the Republican Institute for Knowledge Control Mikalaj Fyaskou.

In Ukraine, testing is monitored by non-governmental organization. And they find errors.

"We have the resources at the Ministry of Education, through which applicants can view their results and correct answers after a certain time. There is a public organization "Reliance" which keeps track of how the testing goes. And they raise questions: for example, they criticized the tests as there were many errors in math last year. There were errors in the Ukrainian language, too"- says Kyiv journalist Natalka Vasyutin.

There are no independent observers at the testing in Belarus. No one ever heard about the errors in the tests either.

"Applicants can see their works only when they appeal against the grade. Of course, they may decide not to file an appeal”, - they tell about Russia’s Unified State Exam in the Federal Service for Supervision in the sphere of Education and Science.

"It is necessary to conduct monitoring of the testing. However, we don't have the structures which could deal with it. Questions are raised as applicants see only the final result. And which mistakes were made, whether everything was correct - it's up to the calculations made by the machine. There is no reverse procedure, it is impossible to check the objectiveness", - says expert of the agency of humanitarian technologies Svyatlana Matskevich.

"They heard nothing about this in the Institute for Control... There is no information that they have ever been checked", - Euroradio has been told in the State Control.

It is weird that no one monitors the testing from the outside, while the Institute for Knowledge Control is an observer and an executor at the same time.

Photo - Euroradio.