The test that burst

Rosobrnadzor will strengthen control over the Unified State Examination

The scandalous story of declassifying the materials of the unified state exam in Russian forced Rosobrnadzor to reconsider information security issues. From now on, if assignment options are leaked to open sources, exam materials will be removed from the database and replaced with new ones. At the Unified State Exam points, CCTV cameras will be connected to be able to track those who were helped by teachers to answer questions, or those who managed to use cheat sheets. This was stated recently during a meeting with Moscow schoolchildren by the head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Education, Viktor Bolotov.

As you know, on the eve of the Russian language exam, a schoolboy from St. Petersburg published 15 versions of exam tasks with answers on the Internet. According to Rosobrnadzor, about 60 people from St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, Moscow and the Moscow region were able to take advantage of these options. Graduates of the capital's educational center No. 170 considered that this created unequal conditions for examinees, and sent an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Education Minister Andrei Fursenko and Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika demanding that the Unified State Exam be canceled “before it’s too late.”

The educational department did not take this step, and during a meeting with schoolchildren, the head of Rosobrnadzor tried to explain that they should not make hasty conclusions about the failure of the entire system. According to him, the traditional system of final school exams and university entrance exams has many more vulnerabilities. “For the entire existence of the Unified State Examination, this happened for the first time,” explained Mr. Bolotov. “In addition, the publication of declassified materials actually did little to help those who decided to use them in the exam.” The solutions to options “A” and “B” of the examination paper were published on the Internet. The task consists of three parts. Part "C" is the most difficult part and the mark for it is 30% of the total mark for the exam. Solving the first two parts only guarantees a “three”. “If a “cheating” child received a high score on the Unified State Exam, this means that he achieved this solely thanks to his good knowledge,” says the head of Rosobrnadzor.

In a conversation with a Vremya Novostey correspondent, Mr. Bolotov admitted later that the publication of the assignment was not so much a leak as an action planned by someone - in his opinion, a student could not solve problems with 15 options in a couple of hours. An investigation is currently underway to find out the true culprits of the incident.

However, this emergency still strengthened the arguments of traditional opponents of the new system of assessing the knowledge of schoolchildren, which from 2009 will become a mandatory form throughout Russia. Moscow State University Rector Viktor Sadovnichy reminded yesterday that his university will not accept students based on the Unified State Exam. “Personally, I believe that the Unified State Exam does not meet the task of finding talented people who could study at the best universities in the country,” he repeated his long-standing thesis to reporters.

It is worth noting, however, that Viktor Sadovnichy seems to have somewhat softened his position in relation to the testing system. This week he took the initiative to create testing centers, which will be a kind of analogue of the Unified State Exam for the country's leading universities. He also admitted that this year MSU applicants will be asked to indicate their Unified State Exam results upon admission on a voluntary basis. “We do this in order to look at the correlation between the applicant’s Unified State Examination results and his real knowledge, which he will use when passing the exams,” explained Viktor Sadovnichy.

Kirill VASILENKO