Graduations exams started in schools of Georgia
By Tatia Megeneishvili
Monday, October 14
End of school exams in physics, chemistry, biology, and geography will be held at schools using computer-adapted testing (CAT) method this academic year. The students had their first exam in geography on October 12.
More than 2,000 supervisors were involved in the examination process. Prior to the testing, students received cards in their schools, where the time and dates of the exams were announced. The exam in geography was followed by physics on October 13, biology on October 14 and chemistry on October 15.
Director of the National Examinations Center (NAEC), Maia Miminoshvili, said that if a student is to fail these exams, they will have a chance to take the exams in spring together with the rest of the subjects necessary for graduation, which are Georgian language and literature, foreign languages (one according to the students' choice), mathematics, and history.
The grading scale for this exam is based on a 5-10 scale. The barrier for passing the exam is 5.5 points. According to Miminoshvili, more than 1,400 schools are taking part in the examination and only 5.6% students have failed the first exam at the Georgian language schools and a bit more than 7% in non-Georgian language schools. Miminoshvili also expressed her content that many graduates have received high scores.
According to Miminoshvili, the CAT system is very effective. “We started the installation of the system in 2011, this is a very complex and hard system and algorithm, and it is effective because it can measure each students' knowledge individually,” Miminoshvili told Maestro TV. If a student can answer the question correctly, the next question gets slightly harder, if not, the system offers an easier question.
After the first day, students did not seem satisfied with the results. In a Facebook page created especially for this exam, most of the graduates said the exam was hard and feared for the rest of the upcoming exams.