tamar_sanikidze

Education Minister Tamar Sanikidze. (Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch–The vast majority of Georgian school teachers have failed their professional exams.

On Thursday, Businesscontact.ge published statistics which shows that the teachers in primary school had the worst exam results of all.

Teachers may try to pass the professional exam five times. The latest exam was conducted in January. 10,552 teachers registered, but only 6,477 showed up on exam and among them, 1,101 managed to achieve the minimum score or higher. This only amounts to 17 percent of the teachers who took the exam.

Only 26 out of 381 math teachers passed the math test; 7 percent of the math teachers. 15 percent of 317 Georgian literature and grammar teachers managed to pass the exam in literature and grammar.

Nine percent of teachers passed the exam in natural sciences, while 19 percent passed the exam in physics. 17 percent passed the test in chemistry.

458 teachers showed up for the English test and 83 of them passed. 10 out of 29 passed in German, while almost more than half passed the Russian language test. Businesscontact writes among the 19 subjects, the results in Russian with 55 percent passing the exam was the highest result the teachers achieved.

Exams were also held in July 2015. 162 out of 336 passed in Russian. In the July exams, only 90 out of 2,281 teachers passed, which is 3.9 percent.

the data Businesscontact published was provided by the Center of Teachers Training.

Minister of Education Tamar Sanikidze said Thursday after a cabinet meeting that the results are not ‘favorable’ but the problem has remained from past year and there weren’t higher expectations. She said that the government is taking measures to change the system and provides a training program for the teachers, which was launched in September 2015 and January’s exam was the first after the training started.

She explained that the teachers will be able to pass their exams within the next three years and will be tested twice a year.

“We provide proper support for the teachers and in the next three years they will have to respond to the challenges and demands required by the government,” she added.