University students will take professional exams to confirm qualifications

Thirty universities that train personnel for the agro-industrial complex, the nanoindustry, the automotive industry, the electric power industry, the financial market, housing and communal services, the education system, as well as telecommunications, postal services and radio engineering, will participate this year in a pilot project to conduct two quality assessments at once training of its graduates: state final certification and independent assessment of qualifications.

In fact, this practice is not new. For several years now, work has been underway to create a National Qualification System, which can assess the compliance of knowledge and skills acquired by graduates of secondary vocational institutions with the needs of employers. In 2018, graduates of colleges and technical schools began to pass such a qualification in order to obtain a diploma of secondary education, which significantly increases their competitiveness in the labor market. To date, 6,000 people have passed this qualification.

And so, higher education institutions decided to join the procedure for combining the state final certification and independent assessment of qualifications. According to the authors of the project, the merger of the GIA and the NOC is beneficial to all participants in the educational process. Institutes will be able to find out an objective assessment of the quality of their educational programs by employers. Students will have the opportunity to confirm their first qualification free of charge and present a certificate of qualification recognized by employers at the time of employment.

Tasks for such a combined exam are currently being developed by the Councils for Professional Qualifications and will be the same for all universities in all regions of the country. At the certification, graduates of institutes will have to demonstrate their qualifications in real or simulated conditions. The exam can take place directly at a proficiency assessment center (QA) or at a CQA examination centre, which may be located at a university or college.

Graduates who have successfully passed not only the GIA, but also the NOC, receive two documents at once: a diploma of vocational education and a certificate of qualification.

By the way

As practice shows, the unified exam, which graduates of secondary vocational education have been taking for four years, is not at all easy to pass. In 2019, only 38.3% of participants passed an independent qualification assessment. This year, after adjusting the training programs, 56.7% of graduates of secondary vocational educational institutions have successfully passed the independent assessment.

Mona Platonova

Photo by Igor Ivanko / Moskva Agency