The key facts

  • Valery Fadeev proposed reinstating exams in key subjects in addition to the USE
  • The list of key subjects has not yet been determined; the curricula are proposed to be shortened
  • According to a survey, 63% of Russians would support a return to the Soviet model of graduation exams

HRC head's initiative

Valery Fadeev, head of the Council under the President of Russia for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC), proposed reinstating school exams in all key subjects, rather than limiting assessment to the Unified State Exam (USE) in a few selected disciplines. He made this statement in an interview with RT, and the initiative was also covered by Gazeta.Ru and Life.ru. According to him, students today often take the USE in only three subjects, in which case the entire education effectively boils down to three disciplines — an approach he called absurd.

The essence of the proposal

Fadeev stressed that the goal of education is to form a natural-science and humanitarian worldview in schoolchildren, so children should know geography, history, literature, physics, chemistry and other important subjects at least at a basic level. 'And in these subjects, I believe, exams should be brought back,' Gazeta.Ru quotes him as saying. At the same time, the list of key subjects for which exams should be held has yet to be determined. The HRC head also proposed shortening the courses themselves so as not to increase the workload on students: 'we still need to determine which subjects are key... the courses themselves need to be shortened,' the outlet quotes him.

Context

Gazeta.Ru recalls that researchers previously found, based on a survey, that 63% of Russians would like to bring back the Soviet-style system of final school exams, 18% would prefer to replace the current state exams with a general graduation exam based on ticket questions, and only 10% would not want to change the current system. Life.ru, for its part, notes that a methodologist earlier explained the benefits of schoolchildren taking part in olympiads: they help prepare for the USE and university admission even without a prize-winning diploma, since non-standard problems teach students to justify their solutions step by step, a skill useful in the second part of the exam. Fadeev's proposal currently remains an expressed position: the sources report no decisions or plans for its implementation.