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Unified State Exam

In 2009, the E.G.E., or Unified State Exam (the Russian version of American SAT), in Russian language and math became mandatory for high school graduation and college entrance. Student who are planning to enter college choose a their planned major.

President Dmitri A. Medvedev is a strong supporter of the test as part of his modernization plan and an effort to fight fraud and bribed. He said in a television interview in August 2009 that the E.G.E. is “a) directed against corruption; b) it makes the testing process much more transparent” . Mr Medvedev and other officials, includ­ing Sergei B. Ivanov, the first deputy Prime Minister, also praised the test as a “social lift” that gives students from the provinces a fair chance to enter prestig­ious universities.

But there are op­ponents to the experi­ment. Sergei Mironov, chairman of the Fed­eration Council, Rus­sia’s upper chamber of Parliament, said last month that the E.G.E. “experiment is playing a negative role” and that Interior Ministry statistics showed that corruption in education doubled in 2009.

Academics and par­ents say that they see an overall drop in edu­cation standards, em­bodied by the E.G.E.’s multiple-choice tests, which are the polar op­posite of the oral exams and essays that were the basis of the Soviet test­ing system.

“We see that stu­dents can do brilliant­ly on the E.G.E., but they come here and don’t know a lot,” said Yevgenia Petrova, who has taught at Saratov State University for nearly 50 years.

At State Educatio­nal Institution Educa­tional Centre No. 109, students are preparing for the E.G.E. and they are not at all op­posed to it. “The idea is not bad,” said Ma­ria Zamyatina. “It just needs improvements”.

(adapted from the International Herald Tribune)