Director of the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment (UCEQA) Tetiana Vakulenko states that the current model of the National Multi-Subject Test (NMT) is not perfect, but for several consecutive years, it has allowed for a transparent selection process for higher education institutions in Ukraine.
"The Ukrainian and regional educational quality assessment centers have been operating for over 20 years, and there has not been a single year when the issues of expediency, content, and format of entrance examinations did not concern the public. Such public resonance is understandable, as the External Independent Testing (EIT) and NMT affect hundreds of thousands of applicants and their relatives," Vakulenko said at a session of the Verkhovna Rada on Wednesday.
She noted that the current NMT model is not perfect, just like any model of standardized assessments, as they do not take into account all force majeure events, challenges, individual stories, and situations.
"But this system, for several years in a row, provides us with the opportunity to do the impossible under the conditions of a full-scale war—to ensure transparent selection for higher education institutions of Ukraine," the UCEQA director emphasized.
As previously reported, the EIT is a comprehensive assessment aimed at determining the level of educational achievements of secondary school graduates upon their admission to higher education institutions in Ukraine. The EIT began to be applied in 2006 and was conducted until 2022.
The National Multi-Subject Test (NMT) was introduced in Ukraine in 2022 as a temporary replacement for the traditional EIT in response to the challenges of the full-scale invasion by Russia.
UCEQA Director Tetiana Vakulenko states that transitioning from the NMT back to a certain form of EIT will require at least a year of preparation for the format change.
This year’s NMT is being conducted according to last year’s model: on a single day with the possibility of additional sessions. The list of NMT subjects remains unchanged—applicants take Ukrainian language, mathematics, history of Ukraine, and one elective subject: a foreign language, biology, geography, physics, chemistry, or Ukrainian literature.
On social networks, just as last year, active discussions are ongoing regarding the fact that this year’s tasks are harder than last year’s, that mathematics should be made an elective subject, that the number of testing subjects should be reduced, and that the NMT should be split over several days.
