How the USE is changing in the humanities

As follows from the documents published for discussion by the Federal Institute of Pedagogical Measurements (FIPI), the updated USE program in a number of subjects involves substantive changes. In addition to the Unified State Examination in Literature, which Kommersant has already reported about, there are also changes in the programs in social science and history: the thematic blocks “Democracy”, “Civil Society and the State”, “Conscription. Alternative Civil Service” and “International Law”; the second includes tasks related to a special military operation. In Rosobrnadzor, the changes are explained by the introduction of a single federal educational program for the whole country and note that knowledge on most “excluded” topics will be tested in other sections. Experts believe that it is not worth looking for only an ideological component in the changes, and remind that the USE program is constantly changing. The head of the presidential council, Valery Fadeev, notes that education is ideological in any country.

As previously reported by “Kommersant”, FIPI published for public and professional discussion a number of documents related to the content of the OGE and the Unified State Examination in 2024 – including demo exams, an assessment system and the thematic component of tasks (codifier). Earlier, Kommersant already reported on changes in the Unified State Exam in literature: texts created before the middle of the 19th century were excluded from the codifier, but it expanded (mainly due to works about the Great Patriotic War) and the block of literature of the Soviet period was edited. Rosobrnadzor (the founder of FIPI) explained that the changes are related to the unified federal educational program, which will be taught in all schools of the country from September 1. They added that knowledge of earlier Russian literature is substantively tested at the OGE after the 9th grade, but the USE is also designed in such a way that “54% of the maximum score” can be obtained based on knowledge of the classics of the first half of the 19th century.

There are also changes in the USE codifiers in other subjects – for example, in the social studies codifier there are no more topics such as “democracy”, “civil society and the state”, “military duty and alternative civil service” and “international law”.

At the same time, it is noted that the exam should check whether the participant has formed “awareness of Russian civic identity” and “the civic position of a person who consciously accepts traditional national and universal humanistic and democratic values.”

In Rosobrnadzor, Kommersant again confirmed that all changes in the USE codifiers are associated with a change in the Federal State Educational Standard and the introduction of a unified federal educational program (FEP). The exclusion of the topics mentioned above in Rosobrnadzor is explained by structural changes: “FOP includes the topic “Form of the state: form of government, form of state (territorial) structure, political regime” at the basic level,” the agency said. “At an in-depth level, this is“ The concept of the form of the state. Forms of government. State-territorial structure. Political regime. Types of political regimes”. Democracy is one of the types of political regimes, knowledge of its features will be tested within the appropriate section of the codifier, as well as understanding of the problems of interaction between civil society and public authorities in a democratic state. Knowledge about military duty and various aspects of its performance will be tested within the framework of the topic “Constitutional obligations of a citizen of the Russian Federation”.

“International law”, however, has indeed disappeared from both the FOP and the codifier. Rosobrnadzor did not explain these changes. “The ongoing changes in the Unified State Examination and, more broadly, in Russian education fully reflect the current historical moment,” says Konstantin Dobrynin, senior partner at the Pen & Paper Bar Association, recalling the constitutional reform (2020), which declared the primacy of Russian law over international law. Mr. Dobrynin complains about the lack of legal literacy in Russia and calls not to reduce, but, on the contrary, to add legal blocks both to the Unified State Examination and to school materials on social science: “International law is needed there now more than ever.”

The head of the Independent Education Laboratory project, USE researcher Anton Chubukov told Kommersant that changes in the codifier do not automatically mean changes in the questions themselves on the exam: “Both the codifier and the FOP give only the headings of topics, but how these topics will be disclosed , depends on the author of the textbook, the teacher and the compiler of the exam questions. In theory, under the remaining headings in the draft codifier, you can find a place for all the “disappeared” sections. Mr. Chubukov believes that “the new educational standard reflects the bias of school social science towards studying the realities of precisely modern Russian society”: “The subject becomes a kind of “civil life safety” designed to teach, in particular, how to use “adult” services such as insurance and bank deposits, protect from scammers.

Questions related to the values ​​of Russian society do not appear in the Unified State Examination for the first time — “their number has been gradually increasing since at least 2021.”

Anna Musikhina, a social studies teacher and content producer at the Skysmart online school, notes that “annual changes in the USE in all subjects should be taken for granted”: “The final exam is constantly being improved to improve the system for testing students’ knowledge: several correct answers appear in assignments, in some, more immersion in the topic and the presence of argumentation are now needed. Graduates are less and less likely to pass the exam only by memorization, they are expected to understand the subject, explain the answer.

Tasks on the topic of SVO have been added to the materials for the exam in history (a section about it, as Kommersant previously reported, is included in history textbooks for grades 11); in addition, the blocks of questions devoted to the Great Patriotic War have been expanded. The text about the participant of the SVO is offered to ninth-graders in the oral part of the OGE in the Russian language. The head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Valery Fadeev, believes that “the topic of the Great Patriotic War “withered” at some point in the school curriculum, although it was always alive in the people’s memory, so the increased attention to it is a response to the popular idea of ​​the history of the twentieth century, and not some ideological goal. Mr. Fadeev notes at the same time that “the concept of ideology frightens a part of Russian society, and therefore there is an idea that there can be no elements of ideology in the education system” – but he considers this opinion a delusion.

“In any country, education is ideological,” Valery Fadeev told Kommersant. “Raising the flag and singing the anthem was not invented here, but in the United States. Ideology permeates the life of modern society, and the fact that exams reflect this and set the standards of life in society is absolutely normal, this is their goal.

The public and professional discussion of the published documents will last until September 30, after which the teaching community “waits for clarification and the final version of the codifier” – it, according to the experience of previous years, will be published in October or November.

Polina Yachmennikova, Milena Dvoychenkova