The Ministry of Education (Minerd) has just announced 8th and 12th grade students will again have to take the National Standardized Tests. The passing of the tests have been a requirement to enter universities here that was relaxed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Due to the pandemic, for nearly two years school children have been out of the classrooms, with a minority able to participate in virtual classes over highly unreliable internet services with less-than-optimal learning environments. Although not officially announced, the Minerd is known to have issued a tender for the transportation of the exams to the 18 different school regions in the country, as reported in Diario Libre.
There has been a major backlash to this announcement, with over 15,000 students, mostly from the nation’s public schools, calling for the cancellation of the exams, since they were ‘the generation that underwent 18 months of virtual classes….and [we] are not prepared.”
The exams are set to begin in mid-July, and cover science, math, language and social studies.
Read more in Spanish:
Diario Libre
11 April 2022