Monitoring Student Progress in Reading
Students take national examinations in Grades 9 and 11, but national examinations are not conducted in primary school. To be awarded the basic and secondary school certificates, students must pass two compulsory national external examinations in mathematics and Russian: the State Summative Attestation for basic school and the Unified State Examination for secondary school. For the State Summative Attestation, examination papers are developed centrally and results are marked and graded at the regional level. For the Unified State Examination, examination papers are developed centrally and results are marked at the regional level and scaled centrally at the federal level. To earn the basic school certificate, students also must pass two additional examinations in subjects they select according to their future educational plans. Tests in Russian language include text related tasks that assess different reading skills.
Since 2016, nationwide evaluation programs have been introduced on the following subjects: the Russian language, mathematics, and science for fourth grade students.
Innovations in assessment arising from general education reform include the introduction of a high quality system of assessment without grades or marks in primary school, and a shift in the orientation of assessment from absolute achievement to the trend of student achievement throughout primary school.
In recent years the system of knowledge control has changed in Moscow schools. The “tests and exams for the bosses” paradigm was replaced one of “control for the benefit of schools, families, and students.” Moscow began implementing control systems in education as a tool to support the learning process that focuses on achieving new educational results, and is demanded by schools: intra-school assessment systems together with independent assessments allow schools to assess their own strengths and weaknesses objectively and to make the necessary organizational and personnel decisions in time.
Development of the regional system of general education quality evaluation is one of the priority areas for advancing metropolitan education. The regional system of education quality evaluation serves to:
- Provide information about trends in academic achievement to different groups of customers, including parents
- Identifies influences on the quality of education and ensures informed management decisions
- Enables the state public evaluation of education quality
The Moscow regional system of educational achievement assessment provides:
- Coverage of all levels of education (primary, basic, and secondary education)
- Measurement of school subject and meta-subject results
- The use of assessment tools in accordance with the federal component of state educational standards as well as the Federal State Educational Standard (FSES) of general education
The Moscow regional independent assessment of educational achievements is based on the principles of:
- Independence of assessment procedures, reliability and validity of obtained results due to scrupulous compliance with all procedural requirements for development of assessment tools, and administration of tests (e.g., obligatory presence of an independent observer)
- Uniform standards of educational results (including the compulsory component determined by federal authorities and the one determined on the regional level) specifying the content and structure of regional assessment tools
- Providing assessments in which educational institutions participate on both a compulsory and voluntary basis
The Moscow System of Independent Evaluation conducts compulsory assessments. Since the 2014–2015 school year, the compulsory independent assessments of academic achievement have been conducted for fourth grade students.
Assessment tools developed by the Moscow Centre for Quality of Education for fourth grade students includes the complex assessment of intersubject (cognitive) skills and the assessment of science and mathematics literacy, and at the beginning of the fifth grade the assessment of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) competency and the assessment of communicative and regulatory universal learning skills in project activity.7