Civic Organizations will Appeal to the President if there is an Attempt to Cancel EIT

Thursday, 11 March 2010

Civic Organizations will file appeals with the new President of Ukraine in the event that external independent testing is threatened with cancellation a correspondent from HolosUA announced that Liliya Hrynevych, past Director of the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment (UCEQA) made this announcement at a press-conference today in Kyiv.  “If this [threatening the cancellation of EIT], then I think that not only we, but every member of society—those who already participated in EIT, and obviously those who plan on participating—will make appeals to the President,” she emphasized.  According to Ms. Hrynevych, cancelling EIT will be a giant step backwards in reforming the Ukrainian Educational system.  She added that according to surveys EIT has a “solid 70% of society supporting it.” 

 According to the head of the administration of the civic network OPORA, in order to “defend” the benefits of EIT, we need to not only write letters to the President, but also to make appeals to regional officials and publicize the benefits through all mass media outlets.  “So that there is no doubt left in the minds of politicians who in some way are responsible to the electorate, that this issue will influence their electability in the next elections,”  she underlined. 

We would like to remind you that on January 21, 2010, the Ukrainian Parliament failed to pass a bill on EIT during its second reading.  At this time, EIT is functioning in Ukraine on the basis of a joint order of President Yushchenko and the Minister of Education and Sciences.

As Holos announced earlier, the new President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych vowed to make EIT voluntary during his election campaign. 

HolosUA, March 10, 2010, 6:07pm