NEW SYSTEM OF SECONDARY SCHOOL LEAVING AND HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS’
ENTRANCE EXAMS TO BE INTRODUCED FROM 2007 BY ONE SUBJECT

YEREVAN, AUGUST 17, NOYAN TAPAN. A new system of school- leaving exams
of secondary education and entrance exams of institutions of higher
education is envisaged to introduce in Armenia in coming years: the
system will be introduced starting from 2007, by one subject, "Armenian
Language and Literature." The new system was presented on August 17
to about 200 directors of Yerevan schools. As Vanya Barseghian, the
Estimation and Testing Center Director of the RA Ministry of Education
and Science mentioned, it’s envisaged to change school-leaving exams
by state joint centralized ones. So, school leaving state exams will
be of two types: school-leaving and joint. They will involve demands
necessary for secondary school-leaving exams and entrance exams of
institutions of higher education. A school-leaver may choose the
type of exam by his wish. V.Barseghian mentioned that school-leaving
and joint exams on every subject will be held centralized, one day,
in territorial school-leaving and joint examination centers of the
republic. By the way, organizers of the examination process must not
be specialists of the given or of an adjacent subject.

According to V.Barseghian, 10-point scale will be fixed for estimation
of exams, and its positive threshold will be 4 points. The school
directors mentioned during the discussion that they do not accept some
principles of the new system, but, "nobody takes their opinion into
account." In the opinion of Anahit Bakhshian, the Yerevan No27 school
director, the envisaged reforms, if they are implemented in the right
way, will really serve for increasing authority of the school. But,
according to her words, "right mechanisms and right people" were not
chosen for implementation of those reforms. A.Bakhshian also mentioned
that tests must not be formed by using the text-books which do not
correspond to essense of the new system. "The new system demands to
give knowledge to a child and to check his skills within the framework
of that knowledge.

And text-books used today do not give those possibilities," A.Bakhshian
mentioned.