| Abstract: | The world-wide tendency of national governments taking responsibility for the quality of education by setting standards and monitoring achievement, while leaving the responsibility for the delivered curriculum to the providers, is also felt in Eastern Europe and Russia. The context of this article is this process in the Russian Federation (RF) where the practice of realising 'a common educational space' by enforcing a uniform curriculum upon schools has been replaced by concluding agreements between the federal Ministry of Education and regional authorities about the content of education. The transition to an outcome-based curriculum with more freedom for schools for the content of their teaching, however, has still a long way to go. Essential for this transition is the availability of reliable and efficient instruments to monitor educational achievement, at both the federal and the regional level. This article depicts the present state of affairs in educational assessment in Russia, and focuses on the results of a Russian-Dutch project to explore the feasibility in the RF of a system of final examinations with written, standardised tests. |
