The Ministry of Education has proposed abolishing the exam passing threshold for 9th-grade primary school students, shifting the benchmark to positive annual grades. The controversial plan, which also seeks to restore test corrections during the academic year, faces a divided education sector and delayed government consideration.
Shifting From Graduation Gatekeeper to Entrance Card
The policy proposal aims to fundamentally alter how primary school completion is measured. Under the proposed framework, students would no longer face a mandatory failure cutoff to finish the 9th grade. Instead of acting as an exit barrier, test results would function as an entry card for the next educational phase.
The minister explained the underlying rationale in an interview a month ago, connecting the initiative to recent failure rates. More than 800 students were unable to meet the minimum threshold of 15% during the most recent testing cycle. A previously developed plan would have raised that minimum requirement to 20% for the current academic year.
If the government adopts the new amendments, obtaining a basic certificate in the future will be sufficient to have positive annual grades in all subjects. Supporters argue this approach prevents young people who received positive grades in all subjects but failed the exam due to unfortunate circumstances from losing certification simply due to unfortunate circumstances on exam day. Subsequent institutions like secondary schools, gymnasiums, or vocational schools could then evaluate the results of a potential student according to its needs.
Government Consideration Delayed Amid Summer Push
The Ministry of Education began promoting a whole package of changes for government consideration in August. The broader plan includes the removal of the exam threshold alongside the return of the possibility of correcting tests during the academic year.
Cabinet review was initially planned to consider these amendments in the government this week, just before the start of the new academic year. However, now the consideration of the issue has been postponed for a week, leaving the education sector waiting for official action.
Deep Division Across Abel Primary School and Limbaži State Gymnasium
The proposed changes have triggered a sharp divide in the sector into two camps, creating opposing camps even within the same school.
Dace Kalniņa-Aleksandrova, Director of Abel Primary School
Exams at the end of primary school are necessary, and the minimum threshold is also necessary,
believes the director of Abel Primary School, Dace Kalniņa-Aleksandrova. Kalniņa-Aleksandrova, whose school in the Jēkabpils region has about 150 students, notes that in primary school classes, most children lack motivation to study, studying for their mothers and for their teachers.
Gunta Lace, Director of Limbaži State Gymnasium
The director of Limbaži State Gymnasium, Gunta Lace, finds the minister’s idea of the exam result as an entry card to the next level acceptable. Lace’s institution already evaluates the results of centralized exams when admitting students to the 10th grade, believing this is a more objective indicator than the average annual grade or grades in individual subjects.
Vocational School Skepticism and Union Critique
The first choice for young people with weak academic results will most likely be vocational educational institutions. Yet vocational schools are not pleased with these amendments, as they have long observed a distorted reflection of students’ knowledge in the annual grades assigned by schools.
When these schools organize diagnostic tests for first-year students on their own initiative, they often find that students’ knowledge lags behind the grades assigned by schools. This discrepancy appears most often in the Latvian language among children from former minority schools. Meanwhile, the head of the Education and Science Workers’ Union summarizes that the changes proposed by the minister deserve discussion, but notes that it is unacceptable that the proposed decisions are currently not based on data, as well as the fact that significant changes in educational policy are being promoted in the summer, when practitioners are on vacation and it is more difficult to keep track of current events.
Broader Educational Context and Historical Structures
Vocational education systems in comparable European frameworks, such as the vocational education and training system in Iceland which originates from the time when Iceland was still part of the Danish kingdom where apprentices learned from their masters by working alongside them, demonstrate how upper secondary pathways balance school and workplace learning. Modern European structures rely on frameworks where most VET is offered at the upper secondary level, and the Upper Secondary Act of 2008 called for VET programmes that better respond to labor market needs.
As the cabinet prepares to resume its delayed review of the amendments, the core debate centers on whether annual grades or mandatory exam thresholds provide a fairer evaluation of student potential.
