As minister of education, it is my duty to consistently implement the law and the law is clear. State exit examination is regulated under the legislation, Education Minister Mila Carovska says commenting on the prospect of the law being amended so as to meet the demands of a portion of high school graduates who have been boycotting remote learning, demanding that this year it should include tests on two subjects instead of four.
Carovska reiterates that all students who want to go to university at home or abroad must take the state exit examination.
“The students have the right and it is our duty to execute that right, to take the exams. All students who want to take the test sent applications for the subjects and the assignment by the end of the December, which was the deadline. A majority has started studying. I truly believe we don’t have the right to deny them the right to take the exit exam. What is left if ministers themselves break the law. We need to set an example and hence, according to the law, I have no other option but to organize state exit examinations,” Minister Carovska says in an interview with MIA.
Asked whether the law could undergo changes after the high school graduates secured the support from several political parties, she notes that it might take place in the coming 2021/2022 school year.
“Perhaps in the coming period, for the next exit examination, because we already have a working group with the high school students and the State Exam Center, to consider the new concept for taking the exam and it needs to be modernized,” Carovska says.
Furthermore, the Minister calls ‘fake news’ VMRO-DPMNE’s claims that she has been exerting pressure on the high school graduates and teachers through school principals.
Carovska concurs that reforms are necessary in secondary education but only after elementary education is reformed.
“Let’s start reforming elementary education first. A group has been set up to work on reforms in secondary education, but likely they will start implementing in 2021/2022 in order the next generation to catch in the trend of conception reforms from elementary education,” she tells MIA.
Carovska adds that reforms in vocational schools are already under way. “Local social dialogue is ongoing to align the profiles in demands in vocational schools in line with the needs of the real sector,” she says in the interview.
