Pre-professional exam. Experience and perspectives

​Two education projects, «Engineering class at Moscow school» and «Medical class at Moscow school», have been realized since September 1, 2015 in order to provide conditions for scientific and technological pre-profile and profile education of engineering and medical orientation at state education organization subordinate to the Education Department of Moscow.

In school year 2016-2017 the pupils, who have mastered education programs of compulsory education at state education organizations participating at education projects «Engineering class at Moscow school», «Medical school at Moscow school», were given an opportunity to pass a very unusual «pre-professional exam. This exam was passed by approximately 2,5 thousands of graduates from 133 education organizations of Moscow.The exam contained two parts. The first, theoretical part of pre-professional exam, was carried out on the basis of Moscow Center of Education Quality under the conditions equivalent to Unified State Examination. The variants were formed automatically from the task bank for each participant right before the examination. The second, practice-oriented part was carried out on the basis of profile higher education institutions. During preparation for the exam places for carrying out the practice-oriented part of pre-professional examination were defined, they are 13 engineering higher education institutions and Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M.Sechenov.Teachers of the leading profile higher education institutions developed inter-subject and meta-subject tasks for computer-aided diagnostics of theoretical part, integrated tasks of engineering content in 4 fields (engineering, technological, researching and programming), as well as cases for practical part of pre-professional exam at medical classes.The practical part was passed by graduates of engineering classes using one of three forms optionally. The students, who chose solution of practical tasks, were offered different researching engineering tasks; while solving them they had to show ingenious thinking, innovative approach, knowledge and skills at programming languages, project development of electrical drawings and circuits. The difficulty lies not only in the fact that these tasks do not have absolute answer, but also in time limitation (the time set for task solution is only 60 minutes). Another form of pre-professional exam passing that can be chosen by pupils was presentation of mini-projects. Those, who chose this form, were offered different topics for their mini-projects according to the focus areas of institutions. The time set for the exam was 90 minutes. During this time the pupils had to study the project topic, create research algorithm, select equipment and execute a piece of work using this equipment, make calculations, fix and defend the results.Another form of practical part of the exam, which was chosen by the pupils, was defense of a long-term project that had been worked over during several months. The majority of examination boards of higher education institutions mentioned high quality of the engineering projects presented for defense.For the graduates of medical classes the exam was carried out in the form of objective structured clinical examination, which like at engineering classes, consisted of two parts – theoretical and practical. The tasks for both exam parts were prepared by the leading teachers of Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M.Sechenov. The university provided facilities for the places (stations) with necessary equipment in order to carry out practical part.During approbation, technology of this form of competency test, opportunity of creation of unified bank of evaluation means and procedure of quality evaluation of the studying profile classes participating in educational projects «Engineering class in Moscow», «Medical class in Moscow» were carried out.The results of pre-professional exam make up one of the constituent parts allowing a Moscow graduate to obtain additional preferences from profile higher education institution in recognition of personal achievements while entering.Following the results of theoretical and practical parts of the examination in medical classes 130 participants from 51 educational organizations got 80 points and more, 13 of them from 10 educational organizations (Gymnasium №1272, Gymnasium №1506, Lyceum №1367, Lyceum №1501, Lyceum №1535, Lyceum №1574, Secondary school №962, Secondary school №1231, Secondary school №1253, Secondary school №2070) got 90 points and more. The highest result (95) was gained by 2 participants from Secondary school №1253 and Lyceum №1574.In engineering classes 114 participants got 80 points and more, 17 of them are pupils from eight educational organizations (Secondary school №179, Secondary school №444, Gymnasium №1534, Gymnasium №1539, Lyceum №1537, Lyceum №1571, Lyceum №1580, Lyceum №1557) got 90 points and more. One should especially mention the schools whose pupils got the highest results: a pupil of Gymnasium №1534 got 100 points, a pupil of Secondary school №179 got 98 points, two participants from Lyceum №1537 and Secondary school №444 got 96 points.One should also mention that pre-professional examination upon the programs of profile education at engineering and medical classes was carried out on a voluntary basis according to the graduates’ claims.The examination not only helped revealing gifted and talented graduates, but also allowed a pupil to widen his or her perception of future profession, stimulated search for new knowledge in the selected field. Pre-professional examination enhanced prestige of educational organizations who took part in the project. Examination results allow comparing quality of preparation for the subjects that were studied with enhanced coverage at engineering and medical classes at different Moscow schools.Valentina Andreeva,specialist of MCQE