Over 19,000 high school graduates took the State Matura Exam in 152 testing centers all over Kosovo. Despite the announced sanctions, at the start of the test the questions were photographed and distributed in communication groups on social networks, and then the answers were also posted there. The Ministry of Education said that this did not affect the progress of the process.
Sanctions provided by the latest legal changes failed to prevent cheating in the matriculation test, which more than 19,000 students took on Saturday. Just a few minutes after its launch, the content of the test began to be shared on social networks.
The questions, and then the answers, have circulated in online communication groups.
However, the head of the Division for Evaluation, Standards and Monitoring in the Ministry of Education, Fatmir Elezi, stated that this did not affect the progress of the process.
“This is a phenomenon that happens, somewhere among all the students. Someone managed to take a picture of the test and distribute it on social networks, but it did not have an impact on the process because most of the administrators did their job properly and other students did not manage to see those posts”, said Elezi.
He announced that out of 19,514 high school graduates who took the state matriculation exam in 152 testing centers, only four were excluded because of the use of phones.
After the end of the test, which lasted two and a half hours, some graduates expressed their satisfaction with the organization of the process and said that the opportunities for copying were minimal.
“I expected other questions, but others came out. I don’t have any copies, I handed over the phones and I completed the test”, said one of them.
“The test was not very difficult, the teacher helped us if we had any questions. I don’t believe that anyone has a copy because there is no chance with a copy. If you do practical tests from 2025, the questions will be very similar”, declared a high school graduate.
In an effort to avoid cases of copying, again this year the students did not take the test in the school where they studied, but in others.
In the “Ahmet Gashi” gymnasium facility in Pristina, 150 high school graduates from various schools of the capital underwent the test.
“The process started at 10:00 a.m., so in an orderly manner. The students arrived at 09:00 a.m., we placed them in the classroom and everything went well. We had no problems, that is, neither with the phones nor any remarks for the students,” said the director of this high school, Haxhi Metaj.
In the exam, without passing which one cannot apply to enroll in higher education, the graduates were tested on their knowledge in three compulsory subjects – mathematics, Albanian language and English language, as well as in one elective.
Constantly in Kosovo, copy groups are mobilized at the time of testing. The difference was for this year that with the new Law, harsher measures are included that foresee fines of up to 1,000 to 2,000 euros for natural persons, while legal ones from 5,000 to 20,000 euros.
The threshold for passing the State Matura Exam is 40 percent.
