High school entry - exams, points etc in Poland

I realise that most people reading this forum don't have children (too much time with the computer!) but ...

My 15 year-old has just done his final year at middle school / junior high and is trying to get into a Warsaw high school / grammar school.

Impressions:
- the public exams at age 15/16 are chaotic
- the points system is chaotic and unfair
- fortunately, mistakes at age 15/16 are retrievable

Re. exams:
- one exam on humanities, a second on maths and sciences, a third on foreign languages

Humanities exam:
There's a long list of set reading, but this year no questions on ANY of the 20+ books they were forced to read. Weird. Even weirder, the questions were unclear to a great extent and the marks achieved were very low.

"Maths" exam
Less maths than usual and more chemistry than usual. The mean mark on a national level was appallingly low.
English/French/German as a foreign language
Straightforward, but the results count for nothing - disregarded in terms of high school entry. SO WHAT'S THE POINT??

Then, you get points towards high school entry based on your marks for your last semester. Schools are under pressure to perform, so the marks reflect to a certain extent parent and school management pressure. This is unfair on the teachers - and the meek!

The points achieved go towards a centralised system where you have 3 choices of school in descending order. Like university entry in the UK.

My lazy son awaits developments and I miss out on my holiday ...

The only good thing is that these public exams are not held against you, like poor GCSE/O level results are in England. 3 years to A level / Matura!

Are you sure? It was supposed to only count for nothing last year as it was the first year - this year was supposed to count.

Are there still max 200 points for everything???

50 for math part

50 for humanities part

???

and the 100 for "rest"
the language part??? Interesting!

If you want to send your child to good high school he/she has to have about 175 points...

Some years ago was that. Unfair? I don`t know I could get to the best high school in the Little Poland.

we're still a couple of years behind you ... just finished 1G
but for a different flavour trying for International Baccalaureate ... jury still out (i.e. big Momma is undecided) but it seems ok so far and the amount of English tuition should increase further. It's wierd seeing textbooks in English with GCSE on the front :)

cj in Trojmiasto

Kids in school dont read books and learn to pass exam, they study to get knowledge. On exam there might be some questions with intentions to check this knowledge. Question are unclear? come on, i know this questions, my sister took this exam this year too, majority of question was to check the skill of understanding of reading text, if your kid had problem with it, i feel sorry for You since you will have big problems with him in MIDDLE school. *this year this exam was awfully easy and every one got high scores which is not so good for good students so i cant understand from where you get this "he marks achieved were very low" maybe just lame school?


indeed there was more chemistry but it was on kid level indeed but come on, it all was based on pictures and graphs etc, a person that was "an idiot from chemistry" with a little of luck could get 30 points like my sister described it


its still in tests to get ideal level of difficulty so its not official, but my sister said that in better schools they look on it too ;)


Its perfecly great system i think you might want to say you have somethin against certain teachers not the system itself, i as a person that came thro this system must say that i didnt get higher or lower grades, i got what i deserved


50 first exam
50 second
80 from grades
20 from special achivments

its clear its fair its centralised its universal like also its the recrutation itself is internet'lised

The required amount of points varies every year.

In fact, it is each school that sets the limit and it depends on the achievement of coming students. If there are many who are close to 200, the limit can be 175.

If it happened that most new comers were around 100, the limit would be 100. Of course, top secretly.

Varsovian, how's your son? Is he accpeted to school he has wanted?
What LO he has chosen?

PS
If someone have children in Lodz and wonder what LO choose I can advice a lil bit (well, everything might changed since 2005 when I was graduating my LO but still I think I can help by saying common opinions about some schools)