In the 9th grade of Rosina, in the foreign language exams, give up centralized assessment and observers / Article

This year, it is no longer possible to approve the changes, as it is planned that from the next academic year, the foreign language exam of the 9th grade – in English, German or French – will be organized without the presence of independent observers and allowing the school’s own teachers to evaluate the exam.

With the exam in a foreign language, the session of centralized exams for ninth graders will start on May 22 this year. And this will be the second year when the centralized exams will also be held at the end of elementary school.

Changes have been proposed to the government, which envisage abandoning the centralized evaluation of the 9th grade foreign language exam.

This would mean that the exams would be corrected again in schools on the spot, by the teachers themselves. There would also be no observers from other schools or the municipality.

“If they are not centralized, then it is enough for the educational institution to get by with its own teachers as exam supervisors. There is no longer a need for an observer, and the teachers themselves also appreciate this work. There is no need to involve other teachers from neighboring schools. And here we still rely on the integrity of the teachers ,” explained Kaspars Špule, head of the VISC General Education Examinations Department.

Social partners oppose. Centralized examination and evaluation gives an objective overview and allows comparison of schools with each other.

If the students correct the exams themselves, there may be a desire to help pass the exam. The school’s performance also depends on it, say experts.

“When we anonymize the works, when we don’t know what we are correcting, then the approach is always more objective. And cooperation between teachers is very important, when a teacher from Daugavpils can cooperate with a teacher from Liepāja, instead of talking only to his for school teachers. Preserving this anonymity and cooperation between exam evaluators actually gives more objective and reliable results,” said Liene Voronenko, head of education at the Latvian Employers’ Confederation.

The leadership of the teachers’ union also pointed out that it would not be correct to shake the system and evaluate it this way in one exam and in another way.

“Unfortunately, there is often this veil of mistrust. In our opinion, there must be consistency. Either in all subjects that have these centralized exams – or they must be corrected on the spot, or all are centralized,” said the head of the Latvian Education and Science Employees’ Union (LIZDA) Inga Vanaga.

The lack of teachers is said to be one of the reasons why the changes have been proposed. They would apply only to the foreign language exam, since the differences in the results are not so pronounced.

“Latvian is the national language for us, and it is quite important for us to get these results there. It is related to the national language proficiency test, including. And math results unfortunately differ when the evaluation is done in schools and when it is done centrally,” explained the VISC General Education test head of department Kaspars Špule.

For now, this is just an idea, which will be decided in the government. This would apply to the foreign language exam next spring.