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Certification – Increasing the Education Level or Delicate Form of Staff Reduction

June 14, 2011

Sopo Getsadze

The process of teacher certification started in 2010 by the Education Ministry of Georgia. The participation is voluntary. However, it will become obligatory starting from the year of 2014. The certification exams will take place in two directions in the form of the subject and pedagogical testing.

As the head of the Research Department of National Center of Examination Ia Kutaladze noted with the Human Rights Center, the exam of professional capacities will evaluate the decision-making abilities of the teacher: “It evaluates the class governing, communication with the students, establishing the rules of conduct. The second obligatory part of the exam is evaluation of subject awareness. The tests of subject knowledge are divided in two parts, the tests oriented at the subject awareness and the method of teaching.”

The principal of Tbilisi #24 Public School Gia Murghulia noted with us that the certification exams have significant importance. According to him, people need to know how qualified are the teachers who teach their children.

There are dissenting opinions among the teachers. “Generally, I really like the idea and the content of certification. It is rather democratic by content. This process is necessary for self-control,” – states the teacher of Russian language Tsitsi Khoshtaria. The history teacher Tea Tkeshelashvili does not share her opinion. According to her, the test of professional capacities will not evaluate their competence of leading the lesson: “At the age of 30, 40 or 50 we are not required to know the theories. If they want to examine me as a professional teacher, they should examine the way I lead the lesson and the situation in the class. This can be checked by the assignments that verify how well I find solutions in different situations.”

The teacher certification exams started in the summer of 2010. The teachers of math, Georgian and foreign languages who had minimum one-year experience of pedagogical activity took the exams.

According to the National Examination Center, out of 14 000 registered teachers, 1600 passed both exams in 2010. As Ia Kutaladze notes, the teachers misunderstood the majority of the assignments: “The test assignment has its structure: analyze, discuss and describe. There is a problematic situation described and there might be a question like: what would you do? How would you solve this problem? Very often, instead of analyzing they were paraphrasing the plot. The answers were too broad, for instance: “I will raise their motivation,” how can we decide according to such an answer how the teacher draws the interest of a student?!”

Trade Unions have dissenting opinion regarding this matter. The representative of Free Trade Union of Education Specialists Ertoba Davit Tsikarishvili thinks that the programs, standards and the books are not developed enough to launch the testing in the frameworks of these programs.

In 2009-2010 the states have been implementing the voucher financing program for professional development of state teachers. In the frameworks of the program, every teacher could take the course of the exam programs for free – four credits of subject and professional capacities. The situation has changed since 2011.

As the Free Trade Union of Georgian Teachers and Scientists states the state will give out only 7 000 vouchers for teachers this year. The criteria for these teachers have not been established yet.

According to scheme of professional development, three teacher categories will be determined: the second, the first and the highest. The teacher who successfully passes the certification exams and gains 21 credits will automatically receive the status of teacher of second category. In case he/she wishes to become the teacher of first category, he/she must gain 28 credits during 7 years and 42 credits for the highest status. The certified teacher involved in the scheme needs to participate in 7 different activities out of 17 in order to receive the credits. These are the following activities: participation in the training programs, conferences and seminars, professional internship, working as a mentor-teacher, publishing academic article in magazines and newspapers and others.

The necessity of passing the certification exams raises doubt in some teachers that the state tries to cut down the stuff this way. They recall the fact that few teachers could overcome the exam barrier in 2009. However, on our question – “how possible is it for the state to cut down the stuff this way?” – both the National Center of Exams and schools gave negative answer.

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