Centre for Civic Education (CCE) submitted today an urgency to the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports to promptly decide on the Initiative of the CCE for the abolition of external evaluation of knowledge for pupils until the end of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Only 15 days are left until the external evaluation of knowledge for 9th–grade pupils which requires urgent reaction on the submitted Initiative. Undoubtedly, these are extraordinary circumstances that have hudge and negative influence on the process of teaching and pupils’ learning, but also on their mental health. The CCE expects that the Ministry will take this context into serious consideration as it significantly limits the realistic evaluation of pupils’ accomplishments and may have consequences for their future process of education and individual formation.
The external evaluation of knowledge is a legal obligation, but there is also legal basis for its abolition contained in the Constitution of Montenegro and the Law on Protection of Population from Communicable Diseases, especially in the conditions of such pandemic.
CCE reminds that no law on education prescribes the online model of teaching, and it was logical that children attend some model of minimal teaching in the school year while the pandemic lasts. As the regular teaching is reduced to the minimum of the direct cooperation between teachers and pupils due to infection prevention, causing the absence of their pedagogical interaction as well, it is logical also, based on the constitutional provision, right to health care and the Law on Protection of Population from Communicable Diseases, to abolish or postpone the external evaluation of knowledge which provokes high risk of Coronavirus infection during its conducting.
We emphasize that the CCE does not stand for a permanent abolition of external evaluation of knowledge, but for rational operation in the new reality and the state of sensitive mental health of the young people who are not immune to the deadlines and pressure whose intensification in this situation can not be good for them.
Snežana Kaluđerović, Senior legal advisor