Education Ministry pledges to amend matriculation test

Ministry finds students’ complaints about math portion of test were justified: exam was “unusually hard”.

By DANIELLE ZIRI
education 311 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
education 311
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
The Education Ministry announced on Monday that after conducting an examination of the math matriculation exam which took place last month, it found students’ complaints to be justified: The exam was “unusually hard” and the load of questions which it contained was not adapted to the scope of time students had to solve it.
The ministry conducted the investigation after students from across the country expressed their frustration with the exam questions after the test.
One Rehovot high school student, who was in the most advanced level math class and had received a score of 90 for his schoolwork on the subject, told The Jerusalem Post that the exam was “above [his] abilities.”
According to him, “the general feeling wasn’t good,” and most of his classmates shared the same impression after finishing the test. Some teachers had also expressed concern about the difficulty of the exercises.
In order to compensate, the ministry stated that students would be graded on their four best answers out of the six they provided in the first part of the test. A ninepoint factor will also be added to each grade for that part.
On the second part of the exam, only the best two answers out of three will be examined and four points will be added to each student.
In addition, the advanced level math course curriculum will be re-evaluated and the ministry will formulate conclusions ahead of the upcoming school year. Teachers will be trained according to the changes in order to implement the revised study plan.
The ministry also pledged to adjust the number of questions on the test to the amount of time students get to solve it and reconsider the structure of the exam.
Executive director of the Education Ministry, Dalit Stauber, who conducted the examination, stressed however that the five units matriculation exam is not supposed to be easy and is “a challenge that requires effort.”
The ministry will also revise the existing rules for writing matriculation questionnaires and determine new ones.