Potential maintenance of existing threshold for standardized tests for ninth-grade students may not be adjusted in the current academic year.
Here's Your Rewritten Piece:
Hey there! Let's chat about the Latvia's education system shakeup, shall we? The Education and Science Ministry has shuffled plans regarding the passing grades for 9th graders' centralized exams. They've decided to keep the bar at 10%, refuseing to raise it as initially planned this year.
In the past, a measly 5% was enough to pass these exams! But, over time, the powers-that-be intended to gradually jack up the passing grade threshold to an intimidating 20% by the 2024/2025 academic year.
When the threshold climbed to 10%, the number of flunked students skyrocketed! So, plans got tweaked, and last year, the rough increase to a 15% threshold got delayed a year. Now, the plan is to postpone that increase again.
Just before this year's exams, the Ministry hinted at keeping the bar steady at 10%, basing their decision on the performance of the last exam session. They're worried that a higher score requirement could lead to more 9th graders struggling to pass, resulting in a pool of folks struggling with their basic education.
This academic year, there are 696 re-sitters among the 9th graders, who bombed their national tests during the previous session.
The Ministry now promises to increase the passing grade threshold to 15% from the 2025/2026 academic year.
If the 2023/2024 school year's threshold had been set at 15%, another 970 more elementary school students would have flunked the mathematics exam, boosting the dropout count to 1,563, or 8.29% of the total passers. A total of 498 students, or 2.7%, would have flunked the English language exam, and 239 students, or 1.29%, would have flunked the Latvian language exam.
As for the Grade 12 centralized examinations at the secondary education level, the threshold remains at 20% this academic year, according to earlier plans.
Now, let's get this straight: The Ministry's data doesn't explicitly say what the current national passing grade requirement is, nor does it reveal Riga-specific details or historical pass rates. To learn more about Riga or the impacts of past changes, you'd need reports or official announcements specific to the city and localized data. The 15% threshold mentioned applies nationally, with no Riga-specific deviations indicated, but details on past changes are shrouded in mystery. That's the skinny on Latvia's education system shuffle, mate! Hope this helps!
- The Education and Science Ministry in Latvia has proposed to increase the passing grade threshold for 9th grade centralized exams from the current 10% to 15% starting from the 2025/2026 academic year.
- Initially, the plan was to gradually raise the passing grade threshold to an intimidating 20% by the 2024/2025 academic year, but this has been revised multiple times due to concerns about the number of students struggling to pass.
- The Ministry has been scrutinizing the impact of higher grade thresholds on the number of students who pass their exams, as reflected in the data showing that an increase to a 15% threshold last year would have resulted in an additional 970 students failing the mathematics exam.
- Despite the proposed 15% threshold for the national passing grade in 2025, details on the current national passing grade requirement and historical pass rates, including for the city of Riga, remain unclear, requiring further reports or official announcements for more specific information.
