Gurgen Khachatryan displeased with the level of knowledge of applicants

YEREVAN, JULY 15, ARMENPRESS:

The united admission exams for the running academic year ended July 14 with the “Chemistry” exam. Armenpress news agency spoke with the director of the Assessment and Testing Center Gurgen Khachatryan about the process and flaws registered during them.

- Mr Khachatryan, exams are to assess the knowledge of applicants. How will you assess the process of this year’s university admission exams?

- I will highly assess the level of organization of the exams, as to the results I am rather displeased as this year’s applicants are weak in knowledge. I would assess their knowledge lower from the medium.

- How was the level of tests of the exams?

- The tests of this year’s admission exams were quite good, no sharp inquiries were registered in them. The 30-40 assignments were quite simple and it was easy to overcome the low barrier. The rest ones corresponded to the tests of the past years.

- Though the tests were very easy, the number of applicants who have overcome the minimal barrier was small. How will you explain it?

- Part of the applicants applied for participation in the exams accidentally, may be even under the influence of the moment. Many cases of coming late to the exams have been registered which shows the unserious attitude of applicants toward the exams. Cases were registered when applicants handed their works after five minutes and left. I think it is inexplicable.

- Have you registered extraordinary cases or cases of copying during the whole process of exams?

- No, we haven’t. No cases of copying have been registered. The reason is that the number of applicants was quite small and the number of organizers was enough to watch them. The other reason is that this year’s applicants are not graduates, consequently they were not from the same class or court, they did not know each other and did not help each other.

- In your opinion, which are the flaws of the test admission method?

- Though this year’s admission tests were quite successful, flaws have too been registered. For instance, there was an assignment on “Geography” the answer to which did not correspond to the forwarded conditions of the exam paper. In the other cases the people forming tests attentively followed the conditions dictated by the guideline.

- What expectations do you have from the 2012 admission exams?

- The coming year will be rather complicated. We have already decided to start from September the printing of graduation tests, to have time to refer to the joint exams. In parallel to it we must create a manual to at least conduct “Armenian Language and Armenian Literature” and “Mathematics” subjects in this system. I hope we will publish them in December.