Cabinet approves plan for this year’s final high school exams

Cabinet on Wednesday approved the education ministry’s proposed amendments for the student evaluation system for lyceum and technical education, which will be sent to the House shortly, Education Minister Athina Michaelidou said.

“We have already announced that for the coming year we will have a new student evaluation system,” she said after the session, “and today we have received the cabinet’s approval for the amending regulations we have introduced for the current school year”.

Following the decision, she said that the ministry will proceed with its original plan of lowering the weight of the May final exam for the current school year, and the reduction of teaching material to facilitate the students.

“After today’s approval by the council of ministers, we are submitting this specific proposal to the House, to legally guarantee the changes and improvements that will be made for this year,” she added referring to the second of the twice-yearly exams.

The move comes after the new president said changes would be made to the twice-yearly exams that have met much opposition from students, parents and teachers. How this will affect coming school years has not been finalised.

“We will expect to have the proposal within May after consulting all our stakeholders so that we have a student evaluation system that can be applied over time and which we will certainly evaluate over time,” Michaelidou said.

Regarding the reduction of the material, she said that it will amount to 60 per cent of what was taught.

She explained that the ministry has already announced this internally and that the material for this school year’s final exams will be announced next week so that students can be fully informed about exams before they break up for Easter.

“We must stress that clear instructions have been given for both the exam material and the grading of the papers in order to avoid the inconvenience we experienced in the previous four months,” she added.

What is being done this year is an emergency arrangement, the minister said, “to ameliorate any injustice or any suffering our students went through and again to emphasise that it is being done to help them perform better in the second semester”.

This is also being done to shift focus to the important parts of core knowledge rather than anything irrelevant or unnecessary, she said.

“This also gives us the opportunity to work better pedagogically for the next year, which is our main bet,” Michaelidou concluded.