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- No matter how you sit down: how the complaint about the Unified State Exam revealed the systemic flaws of the exam
No matter how you sit down: how the complaint about the Unified State Exam revealed the systemic flaws of the exam
A recent complaint about the organization of the Unified State Exam in one of the Moscow schools caused a quick reaction from Rosobrnadzor — the agency banned the holding of exams at round tables. The exam organizers at that school placed the graduates at a large round table and thus ignored the standard. As a result, Rosobrnadzor has strengthened control over the Unified State Exam throughout the country. They check the seating arrangements, as well as more acute and systemic problems: from the lack of space to the rush to prepare exam points. The details, as well as what the exam may look like in the future, are in the Izvestia material.
Table shape as a litmus of organization
The scandalous story of the round tables at which the Unified State Exam was taken in one of the Moscow schools did not go unnoticed. Rospotrebnadzor promptly responded by eliminating such seating arrangements for the future, but the exam situation turned out to be more complicated.
— The story of the general round table that happened the other day is a case where Rosobrnadzor immediately and correctly responded to the parents' complaint. We can only welcome such promptness," said Zoya Proshkova, Senior researcher at the Sociological Institute of the National Research Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In her opinion, the organizers violated not only the formal rules, but also undermined the foundations of transparency and objectivity of the procedure.
— The examinee must and has the right to sit at a separate table. Otherwise, the objectivity of the results is not achieved, and the transparency of the USE procedure is also questionable. The safety, comfort and privacy of the exam are not ensured, that is, equal conditions for all students," she emphasizes.
The violation of the standard was not only in the shape of the table, but also in the distance between the examinees. This is exactly what the lecturer of the Znanie Society, associate Professor Tatiana Dorokhova, draws attention to.:
"A round table, an oval table, all these combinations, and so on are violations of the distance between desks, which should be because the Unified State Exam is an individual exam," she clarifies.
According to Zoya Proshkova, the family spends huge resources of time, energy, effort and money on preparing students for the Unified State Exam, and parents are very worried about the organization of the exam.
— For example, parents of online school students (the online education study is supported by the Russian Science Foundation) want their children to take final exams in grades 9 and 11 remotely, but this is not yet out of the question. It is clear that such a request will cause outrage from the traditional education system, the expert emphasizes.
Any seating arrangement where there is no clear isolation between the participants is unacceptable, as it creates risks of cheating and violates the confidentiality of work, said Ilya Mosyagin, a lecturer at the Institute of International Economic Relations. These include composite tables, sofas, and open spaces without partitions.
Director of the Institute of Child Development, Health and Adaptation (within the structure of the Ministry of Education) Elena Pripova notes that the arrangement of tables in the classroom should always correspond to pedagogical goals and forms of work.
— From a physiological and psychological point of view, familiar desks, comfortable and familiar surroundings are preferable when taking final exams. Let's recall Erisman's desk. It is not round and fully meets the physiological and hygienic requirements," the expert added.
According to her, modern desks are the prototype of that historical regular rectangular shape. The purpose of creating conditions for the organization of the exam is a comfortable and familiar working environment. The principle of "do no harm" is followed, so as not to prevent graduates from focusing on the important exam process.
Where norms end and excesses begin
Compliance with the norms of the Unified State Exam is regulated by a number of documents, but even clearly defined rules give room for interpretation.
Galina Danilova, Deputy Director for Development of the Novy Vzglyad school, recalls that the current guidelines specify the requirement for an individual table and chair for each participant, but the shape of the furniture is not directly regulated.
— In this case, the communal tables provoked a massive discussion about the further digitalization of exams and even the idea of creating polling booths. But experts are opposed to overly complicating the procedure," says Galina Danilova.
According to her, closed booths will become an unnecessary measure, as they will only add to graduates' nervousness and may arouse suspicions about the transparency of the procedure. It would be more important to provide comfortable conditions. Since the exam is taken in the summer, graduates often complain about the heat, stuffiness and excessive lighting.
— I propose to provide the premises for the Unified State Exam with air conditioning and ensure that the windows do not face south and southeast, - explained Danilova.
At the same time, the computer exam, although more resource-intensive, has advantages over the blank form. However, the digital exam also has disadvantages: for example, the risk of technical problems or insufficient computer skills.
— Completing assignments on forms followed by a combined check of exam results by members of the subject commissions is a procedure that has been worked out over the years. Perhaps, in the future, the exam will go into numbers, but it will take time," the expert explains.
The exam as a mirror of the system
Violations in the USE process occur regularly, and the point here is most often not in the regulations, but in the human factor. Tatiana Dorokhova, a lecturer at the Znanie Society and a member of the Board of the Russian Makarenkov Association, recalls some flexibility in existing norms.
"Despite the fact that the organizers are diligently prepared, some follow the rules exactly thoroughly, others do not," she notes.
She also points to other alarming signals related to excessive rigidity towards those who give up.
— In my opinion, a more significant bias is the fact that in some schools children were forbidden to take water and chocolates with them to the exam. There's a real violation here, because according to the rules, the guys have the right to carry them," the expert points out.
Violations are fixed, and consequences ensue. According to the editor of the GodLiterature portal.Russian Federation, teacher Tatiana Shipilova, if a violation was recorded during the exam, this is recorded in the protocol, and persons who committed a violation may face administrative and disciplinary measures. But it will not be possible to solve the problem forever with regulations or cameras — systematic work is required.
"No additional control methods will help here," she emphasizes.
The case of the round tables is not a curiosity, but a symptom, experts interviewed by Izvestia note. He clearly showed how subtle cracks in the system — whether it's schedules, lack of space, or lack of flexibility — can escalate into a crisis of trust, and how important it is not only to strictly follow the rules, but also to respect the rights of exam participants: from the distance between desks to the right to shade and a sip of water.
In fact, according to Ilya Mosyagin, a lecturer at the Institute of International Economic Relations, the incident itself, unfortunately, points to systemic problems: a lack of classrooms (especially with an increasing number of participants), attempts by schools to "save" space to the detriment of the rules, and sometimes simply ignorance of standards by the organizers. For example, in Moscow they did not immediately get their bearings with calculators in chemistry, and in Samara they created obstacles for children with hearing aids.
But how to avoid repeating incidents? So far, there have been no severe punishments, although Rosobrnadzor has strengthened control everywhere.:
— QR codes have been introduced in the classrooms - if something is wrong, you have the right to immediately complain through Gosuslugi;
— parents-observers are involved in the exam procedure (they were the ones who recorded more than a hundred violations in the first days of the Unified State Exam);
— additional briefings for the organizers are actively underway.
Izvestia sent requests to the Ministry of Education, Rosobrnadzor, the Federal Institute of Pedagogical Measurements and the Federal Testing Center (FCT).
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