EDUCATION MINISTER RULES OUT UNPROFESSIONAL APPROACH IN ADMISSION COMMISSION’S WORK
By Irina Hovannisian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Aug. 22, 2006
With higher school entrance examinations in Armenia over, the education
minister has praised the work of the admission commission, putting
down some complaints and dissatisfaction from applicants to its
‘strict criteria rather than unprofessional approach.’
"Perhaps they were a bit strict in their criteria, but these criteria
were universal for all applicants," Levon Mkrtchian told reporters
on Tuesday.
Entrance examinations to higher schools ended in Armenia this week,
with many teenage applicants and their parents feeling unhappy with
the way they were handled.
In particular, people complain that at certain examinations officials
helped handpicked entrants with prompts, in other cases they put
psychological pressure and subjectively graded applicants, especially
during oral exams.
Ruzanna Hovannisian is convinced that her daughter, Mariam Ohanian,
was treated unfairly at the oral English language examination.
"She had high marks from the two previous examinations and was
subjected to psychological pressure from the admission commission at
her oral examination. Perhaps her high marks annoyed some people,"
Hovannisian told RFE/RL, adding that she had addressed a letter of
complaint to the minister.
Minister Mkrtchian admits that it is difficult to find a means of
effective struggle against subjectivity in oral examinations. "I feel
that the parent is perhaps right, but we have no solution. The degree
of subjectivity in oral examinations is very high," he said.
As was expected, the threshold for entering an institute or university
faculty has lowered a little this year as compared to the previous
years, with the exception of competitions for the law departments at
the Yerevan State University, Armenia’s biggest and most prestigious
higher school.
To gather 57.5 points (out of 60) is likely to be enough for an
applicant to become a student at the University’s law department
studying free of charge. To be admitted to the paid section of the
department one is likely to score at least 55 points. The sufficient
points for the free sections of the University’s English language,
economics and history departments are likely to be 58, 57.5, and 55,
respectively. The highest score for the world economics department of
the University of Economics is expected to be 55. And for the Medical
University’s therapy department it is likely to be 36.5.
The minister expressed his concern over the dropping competition
for some departments of the Engineering University. Competition is
particularly low for natural sciences departments, where satisfactory
marks from two examinations are enough for admission. "Sending
their children to train as economists, lawyers or diplomats parents
in fact condemn them to future unemployment, as, for example, our
small country hardly needs more than a hundred diplomats every year,"
Mkrtchian stressed.
The final results of the entrance examinations will become available
on August 24.