Representatives of Polish minority schools were presented with changes regarding the assessment of student achievement

On 23 November 2022 the National Education Agency (Lit. Nacionalinė Švietimo Agentūra) has presented changes to the Polish educational community regarding the assessment of student achievement. In 2024, students belonging to the Polish national minority will be able to choose the state matriculation exam in their native language and literature. Only graduates who have passed the entrance test in Polish language and literature will be able to take this exam. The structure of the future intermediate test in Polish language and literature and the state matriculation exam was discussed on Wednesday.

The intermediate test in the native language and literature of the Polish national minority will consist of 3 parts: listening, reading and writing. The test will be conducted in an electronic system and will last an hour and a half. For the listening part, students will be given one or more audio recordings of up to 5 minutes in length on various cultural and social topics, and for the reading part, they will be given texts of up to 800 words on various socio-cultural contexts. Students will be tested on whether and how well they understood background information, ideas, opinions or expressed judgments. Text formation tasks will test the ability to compose and edit a text, such as the appropriate use of linguistic means to achieve correctness, clarity, consistency of the text, etc.

The state matriculation exam on the language and literature of the Polish national minority will consist of two parts: a test and written work. The test will consist of literary and other cultural texts of up to 800 words. It will test students’ ability to analyze, interpret, evaluate, compare, draw conclusions, apply knowledge from different contexts, literature and language. Two essay topics (one of which is related to the topic of the first part) or an interpretive text are proposed. For the reflective text, the student will have to use at least 2 works of fiction or other cultural texts, at least one of which will be from the list of compulsory works. Texts from the list of recommended authors and works can be submitted for interpretation. The minimum length of the developed text is 250 words. The exam will last 3 hours.

It is very gratifying that in the near future graduates of schools with the Polish language of instruction will have the opportunity to take the state exam in their native language. This will undoubtedly facilitate the popularization of the native language among young people, as well as provide an easier start in higher education, since the state exam is scored twice as high when recruiting for Lithuanian universities.

Translated by Kuba Błaszczyk-Pukiewicz