THE FIRST PILOTING OF THE STATE MATURA WAS HELD

The first piloting of the state matura exam was performed in the last week of October and ended with the assessment of tests in the first week of November 2020

About 4,500 third-grade students from 101 high schools participated in the first piloting of the state matura. Two classes were selected from each school, i.e. ten students, to check the final exam for three-year educational profiles.

About fifty tests prepared by the working groups were reviewed and printed immediately before the piloting at the Institute for the Education Quality and Evaluation in Belgrade. The distribution of sealed test boxes was entrusted to the public company Post of Serbia.

On the first day, the students came to the pilot exam half an hour before the testing. The exam started at 9 o'clock and lasted for 90 minutes, and they could only bring the provided work equipment into the classroom. On the first day, when they took the Serbian (i.e. mother tongue) and literature, only pens were allowed for work. Of the minority languages ​​in which secondary education in Serbia is acquired, two were selected for the first piloting of the state matura - Hungarian and Bosnian. On the second day, they took Mathematics, and they were supposed to bring a ballpoint pen and graphite pencil, an eraser and a cutter, geometric accessories and a calculator with basic computer operations. On the third day, high school students took another of the general education subjects, while students in secondary vocational schools took the theoretical part of the professional exam. There were slight deviations from this scheme only in art schools and for a small number of secondary vocational school students who study mathematics for less than two years according to the curriculum.

Tests for different subjects contained different types of tasks – multiple-choice tasks, linking or editing tasks, but also completion tasks and short or extended answer essay tasks.

- We're ready for piloting. Informed students, divided classes into groups following anti-epidemic measures, made duty schedules for teachers. We are impatient to see the tasks, but per the procedures, we are to open the tests just before the beginning of the exam, in front of the students in the exam classroom - says Danijela Veljković, director of the Aleksinac High School.

The testing was monitored by representatives of the Ministry of Education, both Institutes and the State Matura Project, who, after piloting, submitted about 150 detailed reports on the implementation of procedures.

Sealed boxes with completed tests after piloting were brought to the intended location in Belgrade, which was selected for centralized assessment.

- This way of taking the Matura exam with the tests that the Post Office delivers and takes over is much simpler for the school. If it is like that at the real state graduation exam, it will be perfect - believes Marija Matović, director of the School of Economics "Jovan Jovanović Zmaj" in Odžaci.

More than 100 assessors graded about 15,000 tests over four days. The evaluation is followed by a detailed analysis of the results, based on which the procedures will be improved, and the examination tasks and tests will be revised and improved.

The results of the first piloting of the state matura will be announced in December.