The Quality Assurance Agency intends to introduce oral Baccalaureate exams, but not the next two years, the Agency’s director Anatol Topala said in an interview with the online journal of the Government. According to him, this thing requires more intense training, for example in the foreign language. An assessment strategy must be worked out and the teachers must be prepared, IPN reports.

Anatol Topala noted that the Baccalaureate exams of 2013 and 2014 were held in different conditions compared with the previous sessions. There were set up video surveillance cameras and the number of Baccalaureate centers was reduced. This directly influenced the number of students who passed the exams. This year this number was lower because 22% of the candidates were students who failed the exams this year or the previous year. New provisions were included in the Baccalaureate session methodology. Thus, the student caught cheating is able to take the Baccalaureate exams next year only. “These two measures discouraged the students from copying and made the grades to be more objective,” said the Agency’s director.

He also said that they aim to remove the exam irregularities so that the grades are as objective as possible. “In fact, the Baccalaureate exams are a choice and not everyone is obliged to take them. The experience of other countries shows that the number of students passing these exams is different from year to year and only 60% of the high school students want to take the Baccalaureate exams, and only half of these pass them. It is important that the students realize that the highs school is a stage that guides them to an academic career, but there are also other professions from which they can choose,” stated Anatol Topala.

According to a communiqué of the Ministry of Education, after the additional Baccalaureate session, the number of student who passed the exams rose by 2,988 to 15,478 or about 56% of all the candidates. A number of 27,604 students were admitted to the Baccalaureate exams in 2014. The Quality Assurance Agency said the best results were achieved by the graduates of theoretical lyceums. 64.12% of these passed the exams. Among college candidates, 33.27% passed the exams, while in universities -30.60%.