The next five graduations of schools in new regions of the Russian Federation are certified without exams

Graduates of schools in the DPR, LPR, Kherson region and Zaporozhye will be able not to take the exam. Special rules for high school students who will graduate from grade 11 in 2023 have been established by the Ministry of Education. Graduates do not need to take the exam, unless they themselves want to. Grades in the certificate will be set as average for academic performance. According to the ministry, on September 1, 1,334 schools started operating in the new regions of the Russian Federation.

According to the ministry, schools in the new territories are now undergoing a transitional period to the Russian education system, which will end in 2028. During this time, schools should completely switch to the teaching standards adopted in the Russian Federation. It is clear that this is not easy, given that a new school standard (FSES-III) is now being introduced, which even Russian schools have not yet figured out very well. But the work has begun.

“The licensing process has already begun,” said the head of the department, Sergei Kravtsov. “Not only schools, but also colleges and universities received licenses.”

The story of the abolition of the mandatory USE for our system is not unprecedented. In general, all Russian schoolchildren did not pass state exams in 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. And in 2021, exams were postponed all the time, and then they were cut in number. Here, a complex of reasons “played”: both the still clearing covid, and the remote control, which “dropped everything” to us. Monitoring the quality of education has shown with inexorable clarity that distance learning and the associated softer requirements for learning have worsened the quality of education. The pandemic is still haunting graduates. For example, in 2022, the USE was passed by a generation that did not write final exams for grade 9. Some believe that the drop in the average score on the USE-2022 happened because of this.

In Crimea, after 2014, it was also not required to take the exam. There, however, the transition period took only three years, the last grace period was announced in 2017. And at first, the guys there did not pass a full-fledged exam, but its simplified version of the GVE (state final exam). This is also a variant of the final certification after school, which in Russia is taken by children with disabilities, schoolchildren staying in corrective labor colonies, in special boarding schools of a closed type. At the GVE, the graduate himself chooses the form of passing the exam in the Russian language, there are given more hours for writing written papers, you can write papers at home and other mitigation of the exam conditions.

Last year, it was announced that those who graduated from school in the LDNR were also exempted from the mandatory USE. That caused some fears in the ranks of Russian graduates and parents.

– Yes, I remember, some exalted moms and dads, and even applicants were indignant, – says Nikolai Ermolaev, a member of the selection committee of a Moscow university. – How is it, we have been preparing for two years, tutors were paid, and then people will go to enroll in ready-made ones without exams at all? Then, however, they calmed down when they found out about the quota.

Last year, the Ministry of Education and Science decided to accept those applicants from the DPR-LPR who did not pass the exam, according to the quota for foreign students. The main news was that these places are not included in the admission targets and do not affect the competitive lists in any way. Simply put, this is an over-budget reception. Probably, this year graduates from Kherson and Zaporozhye regions will also enter the same quota. Or, if it is no longer enough, the 10% rule for children of CBO participants can be somehow reformed.

– As many predicted, the weather coming under the new special quota “10%” did not, – says an expert in the field of education and the Unified State Examination Maria Buyanova. But there was still some imbalance. 10% of budget places in the country is at least 60 thousand places. And there were 20 times less. For example, the National Research University Higher School of Economics allocated 396 places according to the quota, applications were received from 87 applicants. Only 2 people got into the MIPT according to the quota, and 9 people out of a possible 132 got into ITMO.

But we must take into account, – Maria continues, – that last year all this was introduced rather hastily. A decree on a quota of 10% for children of SVO participants appeared in May, and a month later, the admission campaign practically began. And this year there is time to figure out how many people will come, how it will all be… If there are more than 1,300 schools in the new regions, as you say, this is not a lot, but still a significant figure. There are 40 thousand schools in Russia. The question is how many graduates will go here, and not go to school, or people will go to work at all … It’s only clear to me that they won’t be able to add anyone to those same 10% for the children of NWO participants. Because this is a preferential social category of applicants, as well as for applicants with disabilities, orphans, etc. With its own internal competition. Most likely, something will be done this year with a quota for foreign students.