Draft:Basic State Exam

The Basic State Exam (Russian: Основной государственный экзамен; OGE) is the final exam for basic general education courses in Russia. It is used to control the knowledge obtained by students for 9 years, as well as for admission to secondary vocational education institutions (not in Moscow and the Moscow region (colleges and technical colleges)). It is one of the three forms of the State Final Attestation (GIA).

Procedure

The procedure for conducting the OGE is determined by the "Procedure for conducting the state final attestation on educational programs of basic general education". The key provisions of this document are:

1. The OGE consists of four exams - Russian language, mathematics and two elective subjects.
2. Students who have no academic debts and have fulfilled the curriculum are allowed to take the OGE.
3. For admission to the OGE, a student must receive credit for the final interview in Russian language, which is held on the second Wednesday of February and on additional days.
4. In 2021, the optional OGE was canceled, instead of which students wrote a federal test in the OGE format in one subject of their choice on the basis of their school. It does not affect either the certificate or the grade. The OGE in Russian and mathematics remained in the same format. In 2020, the exam was not held due to the epidemiological situation in the country, final grades were set on the basis of annual grades.
5. In 2022, the exams began to be held again in a "pre-competitive" format with a more complicated version of the tests compared to previous years. This decision was taken as the 2022 coronavirus pandemic was coming to an end.

Format

The format of the exam is related to the USE. Maximum scores for each subject (as of 2022):

• Russian language- 33 points.
• Mathematics (19 in algebra and 12 in geometry) - 31 points.
• Physics- 45 points.
• Chemistry (work with a real experiment) - 40 points.
• Biology- 48 points.
• Geography- 31 points.
• Social Studies- 37 points.
• History- 37 points.
• Literature- 42 points.
• Information and communications technology - 19 points.
• Foreign language - 68 points.

The GIA of 9th grade graduates is assessed at the regional level. In case of successful passing of the exams, pupils are issued certificates of basic general education.

In the 2018/19 academic year, ninth-graders had to take a total of four final exams, of which two were compulsory (Russian language and mathematics), and two more students chose from a list of approved subjects.

In 2018, the approbation of the oral part of the Russian language exam, officially called "Final oral interview in Russian language", began. It, along with the absence of annual grades below "satisfactory", is an admission to the main examination

Mathematics

As of 2024, the mathematics exam is divided into two modules: the Algebra module and the Geometry module. The minimum number of points to obtain a certificate is 8. It is necessary to score at least 6 points in the "Algebra" module and at least 2 points in the "Geometry" module.

If a student, for example, correctly solved 7 tasks from the "Algebra" module and only one from the "Geometry" module, the final certification will not be credited.

The exam consists of 2 parts. In Part 1 pupils are offered tasks where they have to give one answer, and in Part 2 - a detailed answer. The duration of the exam is 235 minutes.

Physics

Part 1 of the physics exam includes a test with a choice of one correct answer, short answer tasks, tasks in which it is necessary to establish a correspondence between the concepts and the text on which it is necessary to answer the questions. One of the text-based tasks belongs to Part 2. In Part 2 pupils are offered tasks, laboratory work and a qualitative task requiring a detailed answer. The duration of the exam is 180 minutes.

Geography

As of 2024, the exam consists of 30 questions, of which 27 are the test part and tasks 12, 28 and 29 are the extended part. The duration of the exam is 150 minutes.

Chemistry

The first part of the exam includes 19 multiple-choice questions. The second part includes two problems on calculation with the help of chemical formulas, one problem on construction of a chain of reactions and drawing up an ionic (short) equation and one problem on ORR. The third part is experimental. The duration of the exam is 180 minutes.

Russian language

The Russian language exam requires the fulfillment of answer-choice tasks, full-answer tasks, essays and narrations. The duration of the exam is 235 minutes. Pupils listen to the text of the essay from the audio recording on the disk attached to the KIMs. In 2018, an oral exam in Russian language was also introduced separately; the duration of the exam is 15 minutes.

Introduction of the OGE

Experiments on the introduction of the GIA in Russian language and mathematics have been conducted in various regions of Russia since 2002. Now such a system is used throughout Russia.

Impact

If the annual mark in a subject obtained by a student on the basis of current (quarter) marks differs from the mark obtained in the examination, the arithmetic mean between the two marks (annual and examination marks) shall be entered in the certificate with rounding upwards. For example, a student has chosen history for the exam. The annual mark for the subject is 5, but he/she received a 3 for the exam. In this case, the student will receive a 4. It can be the other way around, when the annual mark is 3, but the student got a 5 for the exam. In this case the student will also receive a 4 in the certificate.

A different situation: the annual mark in a subject is 4, but in the exam the student got 5, in the certificate the student will get 5, or vice versa, when the annual mark is 5, but for the exam is 4, in the certificate will still be 5, because the arithmetic mean of 4,5 is rounded up to 5.

A different situation: the annual mark in the subject is 4, but in the exam the student got 3, in the certificate the student will get 4, or vice versa, when the annual mark is 3, and the exam is 4, in the certificate will still be 4, because the arithmetic mean of 3.5 is rounded up to 4.

But with the subject "Mathematics" in grade 9, the situation is as follows: when assigning a grade in the certificate, they look at the grades in "Algebra", "Geometry", "Probability and Statistics" and the grade for the exam is the arithmetic mean of these grades.

Incidents

On May 27, 2024, ninth-graders in Nizhny Novgorod were unable to pass the OGE due to a technical failure in the software. The exams in computer science, biology, chemistry, physics and social studies were postponed to a reserve day, and students had to stand outside for over three hours. The prosecutor's office started an inspection of the fulfillment of the legislation on education.