Rules for the National Multimedia Test approved

Status: passed as a law and awaits to be signed by the President 

Who is affected: prospective students, school graduates, graduates with BA degrees, schools, universities, parents, and teachers. 

Summary of the bill: 

• in 2023, admission to junior bachelor’s, bachelor’s, and master’s programs will be conducted under a special procedure that will be defined by the Ministry of Education 
• in the 2022/2023 academic year, education seekers will be exempted from passing the state final assessment. 

Additional information: at a briefing about the admission campaign of 2023 where Serhii Shkarlet (the Minister of Education), Valerii Boyko (the head of the Ukrainian Center For Education Quality Assessment), and Yuliia Hryshyna (the head of the Parliamentary Committee on Education) were present, it was stated that the National Multimedia Test would have three blocks of questions. Two of them will be mandatory — math and the Ukrainian language, — and the third one will be chosen by an applicant: history of Ukraine, a foreign language, biology, chemistry, or physics. 

Students applying for master’s programs will take the Unified Entrance Exam consisting of two blocks: tests in a particular academic discipline and a foreign language. 

What is right: the bill ensures legal certainty. Schoolchildren, students, schools, and universities now know what to expect during this academic year. 

What is wrong: the fact that the history of Ukraine will not be a mandatory discipline for the National Multimedia Test caused a mixed public reaction. At the same time, the Ukrainian Center For Education Quality Assessment states that the Ukrainian language and math are the best choices for determining the potential success of prospective university students. It is also predicted that history will anyway be the most popular discipline of choice among the applicants.