Baccalaureate session starts

The students for whom Romanian is not the mother tongue take the Baccalaureate exam in the Romanian language and literature on June 5. Almost 30,000 twelfth graders and candidates from colleges and universities will be sitting Baccalaureate exams this month, until June 22, Info-Prim Neo reports. On June 8, the twelfth graders will take the exam in the language of study. The papers will be graded according to common standards. The exam in the foreign language will be sat on June 12, the exam in one of the exact sciences or humanities on June 15, the exam of their choice on June 19, while the exam in the mother tongue (Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Gagauz) on June 22. As many as 159 Baccalaureate centers have been opened this year. Three of them are under video supervision. The students who will be caught cheating in the exams will be able to take the exam again only next year. Those who will get a negative grade will be offered one more chance in the rerun session this year. The papers were worked out by 39 coordinators. There were devised four videos against cheating. The tests will be graded at the Chisinau lyceums “Mihail Kogalniceanu” and “George Calinescu”. The paper challenging period this year was extended from 24 hours to 48 hours. The students and teachers will not be allowed to enter the Baccalaureate centers with the mobile phone. The Ministry of Education set up three hotlines for reporting cases of fraud in the Baccalaureate session: (022) 23-46-09, (022) 23-24-02, and (022) 23-32 -82. Such cases can be also reported on the website anticoruptie@edu.md Minister of Educating Mihail Shleahtitski stressed the importance of holding the exams in a transparent way. He said the Government and the Anticorruption Center were warned that principals of education institutions are collecting large sums of money on the pretext of properly organizing the session. “All the costs related to the exams are covered from the state budget and no additional amounts are needed,” said the minister. Under a cooperation agreement between the Education Ministry and the Anticorruption Center, anticorruption inspectors will be present in the institutions where the exams may be compromised, according to plausible information.