New technology introduced to GAT
Instantaneous marking systems are being used for the upcoming General Admission Tests. This means that once a student give their exams, examiners will load it into the machine and get their scores right away. This is being referred to as the “glass” technology.
Each year about 40,000 to 45,000 high school graduates take the examination. The introduction of this system saves much time and money for the country, families, soum and provinces according to officials.
The preparations for the General Admission Tests for the school year 2019-2020 started earlier than expected. Online registrations for the examinations open in February. This year, the registrations will be opening at the same time, however, the organizers are seeing some changes and experts from the Education Evaluation Center have been hard at work to improve the fairness and quality of the tests.
For years, the introduction of a glass system was being discussed, but was never implemented due to insufficient funds. The new system is finally being implemented and is being put into action through Asian Development Bank funding. In 2019, the glass technology will be used in urban and rural areas alike.
Through the project, the Education Evaluation Center started introducing the system to general education schools in Ulaanbaatar beginning last Friday. Teachers of general education schools are being taught about how the system will work and additional information they need to know about the technology.
The same introductory meetings will take place for secondary education teachers in the provinces starting December 9.
Additionally, the Education Evaluation Center has been organizing the General Admission Tests since 2006. According to the center, most of the complaints that they receive are caused by those who are not satisfied with their scores, while most say that the tests are improving to ensure fairness and weed out cheaters. When such a case occurs, the students’ scores are inspected and evaluated again to ensure that there are no mix ups.
Nonetheless, this problem is being resolved through the introduction of the new systems according to Director of the Education Evaluation Center J.Gan-Erdene.
“As of now, we have 30 machines for evaluations. We assumed that we might need a few in reserve for each province in case anything goes wrong and ordered 50 more machines. Thus, we will organize the General Admission Tests with 80 machines in total in 2019. Due to how the education system was transformed, we have fewer graduates than normal this year. Approximately 16,000 students will give the exams. In addition to this, about 4,000 graduates from last year will be taking the exams, so there will be about a total of 20,000 exam takers this year. This is why we thought that the implementation of the system was ideal this year since the number of people taking the exams is half the average size.”