The school is degrading

Baku/24.06.21/Turan: Last year, 42.8 percent of applicants could not score 200 points in exams, the journal of the State Examination Center "Applicant".  Only 9.7 percent of applicants were able to score 500-700 points. These figures are lower than in 2019.

The State Examination Center even notes that there are students in grades 9 and 11 who cannot read and write. It is reported that the average applicant only answered 27-58 percent of the subject tests correctly. Considering that the test tasks are developed within the school curriculum and do not go beyond this framework, that the participants in the entrance exam are selected students of the school, we can conclude that the average graduate does not master 42-73 percent of the school curriculum. Why are the results by the applicants so low?

Member of the Milli Mejlis Committee on Science and Education Eldar Guliyev told Turan that the problem is, first of all, in transferring classes to online format in connection with the coronavirus pandemic.

“True, the teacher speaks and explains online, but we must not forget that direct contact between the teacher and the student is a different thing,” he said.

The committee member noted that during online learning, the Internet did not work in some parts of the country, and some children did not have mobile phones or computers. “Such questions inevitably affect the level of education. On the other hand, a student or a student sitting in front of a teacher feels a great responsibility that the teacher is in front of him, and if he does not fulfill the assigned tasks, his parents will know about it. At online lessons the responsibility is not so tangible," he said.

Guliyev noted that these low results are one of the consequences of the pandemic. "It is not the fault of the teacher or the principal. The decline in some indicators is because of the pandemic," he said.

Education expert Kamran Asadov said that in fact, the State Examination Center checks practical indicators in accordance with the persons participating in the exams.

"The task of secondary schools today is not to prepare students for admission to higher educational institutions. According to the law, the duty of secondary schools is to educate a person with minimal knowledge and skills," he said.

The expert noted that  according to state examination,  the students who cannot write or read means students who do not write anything on the answer card during the exams.

"But this is the wrong measurement tool. Maybe the student did not want to write something, maybe he wrote and then translated? We have to conduct individual checks to keep statistics on such people. The result shown by the exam participants cannot be an indicator of education,” he said.

Asadov says that two categories of people who have reached the Grade 9, but they cannot write or read.

“Some of them may be the children of persons leading a pasture lifestyle in certain territories of Azerbaijan. They are enrolled in school, but in reality, they do not go to school. The second category may be children of wandering persons. The expert stressed that the situation is more dangerous than ever.

“That is, the planned places in the Azerbaijan branch are growing, the number of graduates is decreasing, the admission scores do not correspond, and this picture is not pleasant for us. In the end, it will come to the point that we will ask everyone to apply for admission to the university. Over 30 years we have not been able to achieve a significant improvement in the quality of education,” he said.

In some schools where students are not admitted to universities, the results of final exams are low, but the Ministry of Education has never taken action in this regard.

“We have never seen the Ministry of Education work to improve quality or fire teachers who have something wrong. There is no transformation of activities into results. Every year at the same time the State Examination Center publishes the magazine "Applicant-12", says that the situation is deplorable, and then the Ministry of Education publishes the magazine "report" and says that the situation is excellent. And between them there is education, which is really in a deplorable state,” Asadov said. –0--