Traditional Entrance Examinations for Bachelor’s Degree Programmes / School Leaving Examinations in Ukraine
Before 2020 (the beginning of pandemics) any school-graduate was supposed to take school leaving examinations in some mandatory subjects (state final evaluation is the Matura analogue). Those examinations were also used as university entrance exams.
Test items were developed on the basis of the evaluation programmes in certain subjects, corresponding to the curriculum.
Each year the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine determined the schedule of the examinations as well as the list of test subjects. Examinations were conducted under the standardized procedures, providing equal conditions for all the participants. The examinations were paper-based and were conducted in testing centers specially facilitated in schools, vocational schools and universities throughout Ukraine.
To ensure equity, test forms were translated into some minority languages (Polish, Romanian, Moldovan, Hungarian, Crimean-Tatar and russian). Test organizers also provided special accommodations for the students with special educational needs.
Before 2020 (the beginning of pandemics) any school-graduate was supposed to take school leaving examinations in some mandatory subjects (state final evaluation is the Matura analogue). Those examinations were also used as university entrance exams.
Test items were developed on the basis of the evaluation programmes in certain subjects, corresponding to the curriculum.
Each year the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine determined the schedule of the examinations as well as the list of test subjects. Examinations were conducted under the standardized procedures, providing equal conditions for all the participants. The examinations were paper-based and were conducted in testing centers specially facilitated in schools, vocational schools and universities throughout Ukraine.
To ensure equity, test forms were translated into some minority languages (Polish, Romanian, Moldovan, Hungarian, Crimean-Tatar and russian). Test organizers also provided special accommodations for the students with special educational needs.
The results in a particular subject are determined by the following:
- a 100–200 score scale – the scale used for admission purposes, the score on this scale is determined only for the test-takers who passed the cutscore, the mark is provided to universities. An expert board determined the cutscore on the basis of the test-items analysis and the analysis of the test-statistics.After that, positive results were scaled on a 100-200 score-scale, where 100 is the lowest score allowed to apply for higher education or to apply to universities and 200 is the highest one.
- a 1–12 score scale – the scale used for graduation purposes, the score on this scale is determined for the students who graduated from secondary schools in the current academic year, the mark is recorded in the General Certificate of Full Secondary Education.
The results of the external evaluation are used:
- to determine the competitive score in the process of selection of candidates for entering higher education institutions for Bachelor's Degree programmes on the basis of complete general secondary education level,
- as grades for the State Final Certification on the complete general secondary education level.
The Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment published each test-taker’s individual results on his/her personal Internet page of its web-portal and also in the Unified State Electronic Database on Education, which can be used by all universities in Ukraine.
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, school leaving examinations were temporarily cancelled. In 2020–2022, students took the examinations only to enter universities.