Lisovyi: Education Ministry categorically against dropping math as compulsory NMT subject
Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Oksen Lisovy states that the agency does not support a parliamentary bill on reducing the number of subjects on the National Multi-Subject Test (NMT) and making mathematics an optional subject.
"The government has submitted a bill on the conditions of admission for 2027, which corresponds to the conditions currently in place in 2026… We categorically do not support the alternative bill, which provides for somewhat different conditions regarding mathematics," Lisovyi told journalists in Kyiv on Thursday.
The minister emphasized that the NMT is designed precisely to confirm the key ability to read, write, and count, and mathematics must be a compulsory subject.
"Cancelling mathematics or history, removing them from the compulsory subjects of the NMT is absurd; it will not lead to any positive changes for us as a country," Lisovy said.
The main sessions of the NMT started in Ukraine on May 20 and will run until June 25.
In social networks, as was the case last year, discussions are underway that this year’s tasks are harder than last year’s, in particular in mathematics.
On this wave of discussions, Yulia Hryshyna, head of the subcommittee on higher education of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Education, Science and Innovation, along with 50 lawmakers, registered an alternative to the government bill (No. 15254-1) on reducing the number of NMT subjects in 2027 and establishing that mathematics will be an optional rather than a compulsory subject.
As reported, this year the NMT is being held according to last year’s model: on one day with the possibility of additional sessions; the list of NMT subjects remains unchanged – applicants take the Ukrainian language, mathematics, the history of Ukraine, and one subject of choice: a foreign language, biology, geography, physics, chemistry, or Ukrainian literature.
In 2025, the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment (UCEQA) refuted information spread on social networks regarding the content of the NMT in the history of Ukraine, the complexity and "detachment from reality" of the NMT in mathematics, and the excessive complexity of the NMT in the English language, and also stated that none of the collections of test items for the NMT in the English language contained questions from IELTS or other international tests.
