In St. Petersburg, Orthodox parents oppose their children taking the unified state exam

According to Portal-Credo.ru , the Committee on Education of St. Petersburg began to receive appeals from Orthodox citizens demanding that their children be spared from the procedure for passing the unified state exam (USE), since it is associated with testing and encoding information. Committee chairman Olga Ivanova told a Portal correspondent that she herself had seen three such statements "from representatives of certain religious associations." The Novy Peterburg newspaper published a sample appeal to the Ministry of Education, the local education committee, and school directors. This appeal states that the introduction of children's personal data into the USE database is a violation of Art. 11 of the federal information law. The Orthodox are concerned that barcodes are used in the USE forms, and an identification number is assigned to schoolchildren.

Sources

• The Education Committee of St. Petersburg receives protests from Orthodox parents about the Unified State Examination // Portal-Credo.ru. 2004. March 4.