Round table discussions: State Matura and challenges for teachers

What kind of support is necessary for teachers to prepare for the implementation of the state exam successfully? What does the Ministry of Education expect from teachers, and what kind of support can the Institute for the Improvement of Education provide? How do the experts of the State Matura Project see the challenges for teachers, and how do school principals and teachers define them? How to ensure systemic support for teachers during preparations for the introduction of the state matura exam? These are the questions that the experts gathered at the round table dedicated to the challenges posed to teachers by the state graduation exam tried to answer.

From the point of view of the law, the Centre for Examinations is responsible for the professional part of the state matura exam. In the part of the implementation, the director is responsible, who is in charge of ensuring that the process takes place in the school from beginning to end in a manner regulated by regulations. The teacher is responsible for the result and the student's achievement in the exam. Teachers, however, are not obliged by their conscience or duty to suddenly jump into the state matura format and start doing everything that the state matura openly or implicitly expects of them. For that, they need severe and systematic support - pointed out in the introduction part of the round table moderator Ljiljana Levkov, an expert on the State Matura Project, and invited the participants to join the discussion and highlight the main challenges that the state matura presents to teachers.

The exam materials are made so that they do not deviate from the template at the final exam at the end of primary education or from what the students encounter in competitions, so they should not be too much of a challenge for teachers. However, the teachers have a problem with the implementation of the programme because the evaluation of the exam results will clearly show what is being done in class, and it will no longer be possible not to implement just a part of the curricula, as before, agreed the representatives of professional associations and teachers.

The challenge for all teachers is the preparatory classes, which will burden them and the students, according to the directors' representatives. The teachers at vocational schools are worried about which topics and areas will be covered by the test because it will be known only when the matura programmes for individual profiles are published.

Very quickly, the participants mapped another, perhaps the key, challenge – that most teachers, regardless of how long achievement standards and outcomes have been in place, are still content-oriented. Many teachers do not know what the outcomes are and do not know how to monitor student achievements in relation to standards and outcomes, confirmed the representatives of the State Matura Project.

Teachers need systemic support in implementing outcomes and monitoring standards-oriented achievements, especially considering that the state matura's introduction will emphasize standards in the foreground.

The representative of the Ministry of Education agreed that teacher training is necessary and reminded that the new Strategy and Action Plan provided for them. It is required, however, that there should be synergy between the institutions to obtain adequate effects in a short time, so it was proposed that, in addition to both Institutes, professional associations and school communities should also be involved in the implementation of training.

A media campaign that would promote both the standards and the state matura is essential because, in that way, the unknowns and ambiguities that exist among teachers would be removed.

During the discussion, the participants' request crystallized that the Ministry of Education and the Institute for the Improvement of Education prepare a severe plan to support schools regarding implementing achievement standards and the state matura. A possible new approach could include system support organized through more concrete and precisely defined measures, which individual training for specific segments would support.