Contesting the test that assesses student achievement

Despite parents' demands to remove the Achievement Test from the program, the Ministry of Education will organize it again this year. Education experts estimate that this test often turns into injustice for someone, and the Parents' Council is convinced that this is the last year when students who have completed the ninth grade will be subjected to it.

Despite parents' demands to abolish the Achievement Test, it will be held on June 26 for ninth-grade students throughout Kosovo.

In March of this year, the Parents' Council, following numerous requests from parents, asked the Ministry of Education to consider the possibility of removing the test from the program.

According to the council, students are already subjected to a large number of assessments during the school year and the Achievement Test represents an additional burden.

An official from this organization, on condition of anonymity, said that the June 26 test will be the last, without providing further details.

In a response to KOHA, the Ministry of Education said that this year the test will be organized without any changes, and they did not talk about the future.

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"As we have said in our previous statement on this issue, we appreciate the active role of the Parents' Council within their mandate, and we will continue close communication and cooperation in improving the quality of education, this common objective. Whenever a new decision is made regarding this issue, there will be institutional and social consultation, including parents, education experts and other stakeholders, always having at the center of the goal what is best for students and our education system," the Ministry of Education's response states.

Education expert Rinor Qehaja has assessed that the Achievement Test is not a necessary criterion for enrollment in upper secondary schools, but according to him, there is currently no more reliable mechanism for making the selection.

"The Achievement Test itself does not have a certifying character, in essence in the law on pre-university education it is predetermined as an orientation. The test can be held but not necessarily can serve as a criterion for admission to upper secondary schools, but since there is no other filter and more valid and reliable criterion because most grades from lower secondary education are 5 - inflated, then it becomes more difficult for many schools to enroll in higher schools only with internal success. For this reason, the Achievement Test still continues to be an additional criterion despite the fact that it does not have that necessity and at no time has it been seen as such", said Qehaja.

According to Qehaja, the main problem is not the test, but the way it is administered.

"I do not believe that the achievement test presents any extraordinary administrative burden, but it presents a psychological burden for students under the pressure of registration, since failure to administer the test returns us to a situation where one class in one testing center administers the achievement test well, while another class does not. When we have such a distribution of highly selective administrative rigor, then this testing becomes an injustice for someone," he said.

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The Achievement Test is an assessment given to students at the end of compulsory primary education and serves as the basis for their orientation to secondary education.  

Last year, around 24 students took this test, while this year there are expected to be one thousand fewer.