OPORA of Transcarpathia: State Protection Service is not a participant of EIT

Transcarpathian regional organization of the OPORA called the State Protection Service at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Office in Transcarpathian region to refrain from unprofessional statements misleading the public about the process of external independent testing. The OPORA considers unacceptable the dissemination of information, which was recently published by Transcarpathian media and on the official website of the State Protection Service Department.

First of all, we want to note that employees of the state protection service do not carry out legal activities while working at testing stations. It is not provided by any normative document of the process. For this purpose, at all testing stations, there are Authorized person of the Regional Center for Educational Quality Assessment and technicians of testing stations. According to the regulations, only they inform students on their rights and obligations and only they provide all necessary legal assistance within the testing station.

Meanwhile, police officers are engaged in law enforcement at the stations of external evaluation, and protect the repository which contains materials under the relevant contracts between the centers of the evaluation and the State Protection Service.

However, in some clearly defined situations, to ensure fair conditions of the testing, the Regional Centre for Educational Quality Assessment, in agreement with the Ukrainian Center, informs the Authorized Person at the testing station on the so-called technological break, during which they carry out the control to determine the presence of prohibited technical means. The control of applicants may be carried out with the participation of a police officer using a metal detector. This decision is made by the Authorized person and the person in charge of the testing station. The subject of the procedure infringement is the presence of means of communication, any device for reading, processing, storage and reproduction of information, as well as items that might be components of such technical means or devices. The time spent for control (technological break) is then compensated. Therefore, the total time allotted to work with tests is the same.