Latvia delays decision on planned school assessment changes

Latvia’s government has postponed consideration of planned changes to the education standard until the second week of September, LSM reported.

The changes, initially planned for September 1, would allow students to retake at least one assessment in each subject. Results from centralised examinations would no longer be used to determine whether ninth-grade students receive their certificates, while a centralised science examination would be introduced in the ninth grade.

LSM.lv and Latvijas Radio 5’s Pieci.lv programme “What Is Really Happening?” examined the proposed changes and the debate surrounding them.

The teachers’ trade union has called on the government not to “change the rules of the game when the players are already on the field.”