Monitoring Student Progress in Mathematics and Science
National or Regional Examinations
Students must pass four examinations in order to attain a basic general education certificate: two compulsory national examinations in mathematics and Russian, and two examinations in subjects selected by the students. Certificates are awarded based on the results of the compulsory examinations only.
Students must pass two compulsory national examinations in mathematics and Russian in order to attain a certificate of secondary general education. Students may choose to take additional examinations in other subjects depending on university admission requirements. Examinations in science subjects are not compulsory, although at Grades 9 and 11 students may choose to take examinations in any science subject.
National examinations at the end of secondary education, known as Unified State Examinations (USE), were introduced in 2009, combining the general secondary education graduate examinations with higher education entrance examinations. These examinations as well as the national examinations administered upon graduation from basic school are prepared centrally by test developers from the Federal Institute of Educational Measurement.
In 2015, the USE in mathematics was divided into two independent examinations—basic and profile. Basic examinations are for students who do not plan to go to university or who plan to apply to universities that do not require special qualifications in mathematics; profile examinations are for students planning to apply to universities that require special qualifications in mathematics.
In addition to the national examinations, a school may set examinations in any subject at any grade of basic or secondary education. These may be administered in oral or written form and may include multiple-choice and short response or extended response questions and essays.
The introduction of federal education standards has changed the procedure for school accreditation, increased the role of student assessment, and changed the emphasis slightly from separate assessments of subject knowledge to integrated assessments of mathematic and scientific literacy and the nature of science knowledge and skills.
With the aim of identifying talented students interested in mathematics and science, more Olympiads and other competitions in these subjects have been organized. In the last decade, more attention has been focused on project and investigation results, with an integrative nature, than on subject knowledge acquired.
Monitoring Individual Student Progress
Schools administer formative and summative assessments to ensure consistency of student achievement with the curriculum requirements and to diagnose student progress. Schools decide the timing and form of these assessments. Assessment results sometimes are used for teacher or school accreditation. Generally, summative assessment takes place at the end of each school year in each school subject. Assessment formats include oral examinations, short answer, extended response or essay questions, and multiple-choice tests. Schools usually use individual teacher-made tests, locally developed tests, or tests developed centrally and published as special supplementary materials.
Innovations in assessment arising from general education reform include the introduction of a qualitative system of assessment without grades or marks in primary school and a shift in the orientation of assessment from absolute achievement to the dynamics of student achievement throughout primary and basic school.