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Perspective
Zoran Jovanovski
THREE STEPS TOWARDS
BETTER EXTERNAL TESTING
It does not make any sense to explain how
important the good quality education
is for the future of any country. We all
know that. Reforms in this segment of the
society have long term effects, positive
and less positive, and that is why one should be
very careful with every education reform. The
beginning of September marks the start of the
new school year. We still remember the protests
from the previous school year, and the pupils
know best how they managed to learn what
they missed by being absent from the classes in
a longer period of time and whether it had an
impact on their grades from the external testing.
My impression is that certain reforms in
the education sector, for example the external
testing, need changes. Those changes will not
reduce the potential of the external testing to
give the expected results, but they will produce
a much bigger support for this reform from the
pupils and their parents. In other words, nothing
will be lost, but pupils and the society will gain
a lot. The question is whether we are able as a
society to approach the external testing as a
topic for discussion in a normal, rational and
responsible manner.
Let us remind ourselves. The external testing
was envisaged to produce multiple effects. The
primary goal was to improve the grading made
by the teachers. This means that the grades
are realistic and correspond to the knowledge
showed by the pupils. In order to secure that,
there are fines for the teachers in case the grades
from the external testing differ significantly from 2sometimes not even well connected.
the regular annual grades given by the teachers.
In addition, external testing was supposed to
encourage the teachers to improve their lectures
so that the pupils could learn more. External
14 September 2015
testing was supposed to make the pupils deal
more seriously with their school obligations,
knowing that at the end they will have to do
the test and the grade from it will affect their
grade point average. Finally, external testing
was supposed to protect the teachers from the
parents’ pressures that their kid must have an A
at the end of the school year.
I think it is fair to say that the envisaged effects
are realized only partially. What can be done
1now? I suggest three steps that are very simple.
First, the issue of the textbooks should be
addressed. I propose that for each course
included in external testing only one, not
more textbooks to be used. This will lead to
avoiding asituation in which the answer to a
question included in the external testing could
be found in one, but not in the other textbook
for the same course. It is up to the authorities
to decide whether that textbook will be selected
from a number of textbooks obtained through
a bidding process or the authorities shall invite
the best teachers, selected in accordance with
predetermined criteria, to prepare a new
textbook. I favor the second approach where the
authorities shall also withhold the copyrights,
so that it would be easy to make changes and
supplements to the textbook. Of course, it is of
essential importance the contents of the textbook
to coincide with the best international practices,
to be conceptually oriented rather than being a
collection of numerous pieces of information,
Second, the dynamics of the testing should
be changed.Rather than taking one test at
the end of the school year, covering the
entire course material from the whole year,pupils
should be tested four times per year, at the end of