Ukrainian students can enter a university only after they pass one or more independent electronic tests, known as ZNO tests, that assess their level of education.
But the results of this year’s tests indicate that the education system itself is not up to scratch, and requires serious reform, Ukrainian education experts said. They were commenting on a report released on Aug. 22.
Issued by the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment, which runs ZNO testing across the country, it gives some damning results from this year’s testing of Ukrainian pupils.
Some 30 percent of Ukrainian students think Ukraine is either a federation, confederation, or a union of states, rather than a unitary state. Almost half of them didn’t recognize the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, when shown a picture of the building.
Sixty-five percent failed to recognize a mistake in a phrase translated to Ukrainian from Russian.
Fifty-six percent were unaware that wind strength depends on atmospheric pressure differences.
“We thus see more evidence of a catastrophe in the Ukrainian education system,” said Ivan Prymachenko, the founder of the Prometheus online educational platform. “This is no longer speculation – it’s a fact recorded by the ZNO tests.”
According to Prymachenko, the testing does not cover obscure facts or specific skills, but rather basic knowledge and logic.
“What else is needed to finally acknowledge that the country is facing an educational abyss, and really needs to start radical reforms?” he said.
According to the report, the highest average mark, combining several ZNO tests and scores from school, was recorded in Lviv Oblast — 161 out of 200. Chernivetska Oblast and the city of Kyiv were next highest.
Yegor Stadny, an analyst at CEDOS, a think tank that analyzes government education policy, urged the government to pay attention to the discrepancies in the results among the regions.
According to Stadny, most of the pupils who failed to answer some questions, including those referred to by Prymachenko as “surprising,” were studying in schools that have poor past records and that are in rural areas.
“These schools teach the students that fail these tasks – and not for the first year; it has become a trend,” Stadny said.
The bad ZNO results can only be fixed by focusing attention on particular schools and teachers, and dealing with them, he said.
Ukraine’s average score is 155 out 200.
Those who score more than 120 points out of 200 can go on to compete for a place in a university. Previously, those who scored more than 180 points would have a good chance of winning a state scholarship.
The mandatory ZNO test assessing knowledge of Ukrainian language and literature was taken by 324,000 Ukrainian pupils in 2018. According to Ukrainian Education Minister Liliya Hrynevych, almost 59,000 first-year students will receive scholarships starting in September 2018.
