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SSAC: Half of school graduates with excellent marks failed in entrance exams

29 March 2016 13:30 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Konul Kamilgizi – APA. Azerbaijan has conducted a comparison of the average of school certificate marks of applicants to their scores from entrance examinations, the State Student Admission Commission (SSAC) said in a statement on Tuesday.

The comparison was conducted between the entrance examinations score of applicants with “5” (excellent) mark on all subjects to those with “3” (satisfactory) mark on all subjects.

“97.02% of applicants who graduated from school with “3” mark on all subjects got very low scores—lower than 200 points, while those with “5” mark on all subjects, only 48.46% of them, were able to justify their school certificate marks. It seems that low marks given in schools are often objective, whereas high marks are relatively exaggerated,” said the statement.

“Of course, if unbiased assessment is conducted, the results achieved at one stage of education should be taken into account when entering a new stage. In the current situation, if school certificate marks are taken into account in admission to higher education schools and on this basis an additional score is added to applicants’ examination scores, those with “excellent” marks may outdo ones who have fairly got a high score. We are not in favor of considering school certificate marks as an additional point if there is no high correlation(r> 0.9) between school GPA and entrance exam scores,” the statement said.

The SSAC said the aforementioned problem regarding assessment also arises from failure to apply secondary education standards in places in the same way, noting that there is a significant difference in Grade Point Averages in various schools, a pupil get excellent point at one school but sufficient at other one.

“The SSAC published subject test books in accordance of school programs in order to contribute to the assessment in secondary schools under common standards. Books have been approved by the Ministry of Education as textbooks which present 5- and 9-point system assessment standards so that each school is able to measure its students’ knowledge on the basis of a single assessment system,” the statement said.