Soon, high school students will leave the first generations educated according to reformed plans and programs. In the last three school years, their education was additionally "reformed" by the coronavirus epidemic, suddenly moving students and teachers from traditional to online classrooms, to forced occasional remote work.
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Determined to get the most desirable majors, the students study every day in school, with private teachers and independently, and they also do graduation papers. Parents take out loans. It is not easy for either of them.
Soon, eight-year-old girls and high school students will leave the first generations educated according to reformed plans and programs. In the last three school years, their education was additionally "reformed" by the corona virus epidemic, suddenly moving students and teachers from traditional to online classrooms, to forced occasional remote work. In the clutches of covid 19, the school system "showed adaptability", "not a single school day was lost" in the theory of the educational top. In practice, in many schools, teaching has been reduced to imitation of education, skipping lessons, chasing grades, not knowledge, fulfilling form, not substance, which is well illustrated by the example that since March 2020, students of medical schools have practice only in school offices, and no matter how well equipped they are, it's not the same to work with dolls and with patients.
And that is the image of education, as well as the fact that parents, as they claim, take out loans to pay for private lessons for schoolchildren in almost all general education subjects, so that the children make up for what they should have mastered in school. In such conditions, high school graduates are now at a low start before the start of the race for enrollment in high schools and universities. Determined to get the most desirable majors, they study in three shifts - with subject teachers at school, with private professors and independently. It's not easy for them.
- Gaps in knowledge are as great as the freedom students have given themselves. I want to believe that most of the distance learning was solid, although it was not the same in every school. Some realized that the online lesson was not clear to them, immediately sought help and solved the problem. Someone realized this spring that they didn't remember anything from Google Classroom, so they sat down and did it again. Good students, dedicated to school, from families that encourage them to do so, started to fill gaps in knowledge in time - explains Mirjana Katić, director of the Mathematical High School, from whose desks graduate both young and old graduates.
If a survey could be done for the previous five or ten years, to include the period before the corona and during the corona, in her opinion, the result would be that the children were equally prepared, those who are hardworking and responsible, aware of the challenges ahead.
- For the first league of faculties, the admission process has not been made easier due to the corona virus. I will take as an example those for which mathematics is taken: Mathematical, EFT, FON, Mechanical, Construction... The message to students, based on the tasks from the exams of previous years, is clear - they must work seriously. It used to be taken for granted that children learn on their own. The weather has changed. These are instant generations. Even a smart child will not research logarithmic equations for a month alone, it is simpler for the teacher to tell it in a private lesson. This is our reality, we have to accept it. Anyone who could afford their child's preparation did so - believes Katiceva.
Preparations for future freshmen at the faculties take a long time, costing from several thousand dinars to several hundred euros. Secondary schools are not obliged to organize preparatory classes, and some do this work for free.
- For admission to art faculties, our graduates prepare for months, in classes in Belgrade, Novi Sad, depending on where they plan to continue their education. Our support outside of classes is not enough for them. However, for the future champions of our school, every year in March and April, we organize free preparation for entrance exams in drawing, painting and sculpture, twice a week for three hours. It means a lot to them, and under the circumstances it's the least we can do. The professors have never caused a problem that they hold preparatory classes on Saturdays - recalls Nevenka Đokić, director of the School of Applied Arts in Šabac.
Her impression is that the eighth graders are not confused, that in the years that were interrupted by the corona, they have also matured and realized that they have to adapt and change the way they work and study. Parents generally don't think so. Pupils have lost work habits, have difficulty concentrating, which has resulted in greater insecurity and difficulty in mastering the material, notes Gordana Plemić, director of the "Parent" Association.
- Classes were shortened in the online format, vacations were extended, more teaching and testing was done in schools than there was time for knowledge assessment, supplementary and additional teaching. It was not condensed, nor was the material adapted, nor was the method of teaching, not all children had the same access to online education due to various factors. Private lessons became necessary. Parents cannot be teachers of all subjects. Two lessons for elementary school students costs from 1,200 to 1,500 dinars. If you have two or three school-age children, that's a huge expense. Then it is not surprising that parents take out loans to pay for it - explains Plemićeva, who is convinced that this year's high school graduates are insecure about their knowledge and that it will be more difficult for them to get to the schools they want to continue their education than it was generations before the pandemic.
Due to the difficult conditions, the teachers lowered the criteria and concluded good grades - did they do the students a disservice or not?
The students did not really make a name for themselves at the trial small graduation and at the piloting of the state graduation, in an interview with our newspaper, the school principals do not praise them, but assure that the main reason for this is "insufficient motivation of the graduates" and that some of them must have been responsible for their poor success and ignorance.
- A mock exam is an excellent way to see where there are gaps in knowledge. Children approach it carelessly because it is not for grading, but it is easier for them when they have the most questions with the answers provided. If they were now given a test that would involve checking the material as if everything was absolutely done in the most optimal conditions, I think that the eighth graders in such testing would "disappear". I think the gaps in knowledge are huge, especially in mathematics, which was very difficult to do in the online environment - observes Danijela Raletić, director of the Kragujevac eight-year-old school "21. October".
Her experience shows that students are not used to independent work, hard work and learning, which was especially evident in the age of covid.
- This eighth generation was followed by reformed programs. New teaching methods that encourage logical reasoning, creative thinking and problem solving require students to actively search for knowledge, and that the teacher guides them along the way, not just narrating a lesson in class. We missed that in corona. Due to all these circumstances, I think that the tests at the junior high school graduation will be simple and easy. The problem, like before the corona, will be the last three tasks from the advanced level in mathematics and reading with comprehension of a larger text on the test in the mother tongue - Raletić evaluates.
Talent auditions start next week
Entrance exams for future champions of art schools and specialized high school departments begin at the end of next week. It will be held from May 13 to 22. A total of 6,855 candidates applied for the exam, those who pass will be able to apply for 5,002 talent spots.
The eighth graders have about a month left until the last class in eighth grade, on June 10. The inevitable small graduation awaits them on June 27, 28 and 29. Grammar school graduates are less than three weeks away from the last day of school, May 27, and fourth graders of high vocational and art schools will go to classes a week longer, until June 3.
At least two indexes for each baby
According to the data of the relevant ministry, about 64,200 students will graduate from the eighth grade this year, and a total of 74,982 places are planned for the first grade of secondary schools (of which 56,750 are in secondary vocational education and 18,232 in high school classes). At the beginning of this school year, education expert prof. Dr. Ivan Ivić presented the information that in Serbia there are 113,000 accredited places for enrollment in the first year of higher education, and that 65,000 children are born annually, which means that "for every baby we have two vacant places at the university". If it is known that not everyone completes high school, this means that for one high school graduate there are two and a half free indexes.
Test Structure - Confidential Information
The graduation tests that the eighth graders solved last year were "a reflection of schooling in pandemic circumstances and easier than in regular conditions", and this was specified by the relevant minister before the exam. And now to the question of "Politics" whether there will be most of the closed-type tasks at the upcoming junior high school graduation and why, the educational top says that "according to the procedures of the Institute for the Evaluation of the Quality of Education and Training (ZVKOV) which preserve the secrecy of the tasks and tests for the final the exam, data on the structure, number of open and closed tasks are confidential information". They explained that it is certain that the assignments were prepared in accordance with the new teaching and learning program. It is important to point out that since the beginning of this school year, 94.5 percent of teaching in primary schools has been organized in a traditional way, five percent according to the combined model and less than 0.5 percent remotely.
However, at the trial graduation, a faithful simulation of the upcoming final exam held in March, out of a total of 60 tasks on all three tests (mother tongue, mathematics, combined), students were asked to write the correct answer in only seven. As many as 53 tasks were for rounding, which is a record since the introduction of this exam. "And questions with offered answers do not necessarily mean an easier test", as Branislav Ranđelović, director of ZVKOV, said recently.