The Ministry of Education in the Syrian regime’s government circulated a decision detailing automated and non-automated subjects for the high school diploma during the next academic year 2024-2025.

Based on the decision issued by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which includes the gradual application of automated examinations for all branches of the high school diploma, the Ministry of Education, on Wednesday, March 27, requested its directorates in the provinces to circulate the decision to public, private, and vocational secondary schools.

According to the decision, the Ministry of Education identified the subjects of mathematics, geography, national education, philosophy, biology, physics, chemistry, English language, and history as automated.

As for non-automated subjects, they are Islamic religious education, Christian religious education, and the languages of Arabic, French, and Russian.

The Ministry of Education had announced earlier the implementation of automated exams for students of the general, Sharia, and vocational high school diplomas in the general exams for the academic year 2023-2024, and for some subjects in the mid-term and trial exams.

According to its decision, all subjects of the general high school diploma with its scientific and literary branches will be completely automated, except for the Arabic language for both branches, which will be partially automated.

However, the decision was met with opposition from students and teachers, especially after the mid-term exams, which were uniform across all regime schools. The issues included exams with questions that were too long for the allotted time and some questions that did not contain the correct answer among their choices.

At the end of January, the government approved a proposal by the Ministry of Education to implement automated exams for the high school diploma starting from the next year.

Automated examination subjects for high school study

On February 27, the Ministry of Education identified several academic subjects which the automation system would be applied to in the second-term exams of the current academic year for transitional grades in secondary education.

The automated exam system will be adopted for physics and national education in the first year of scientific high school (tenth grade) and for history and national education in the literary branch.

While in the second year of literary high school (eleventh grade), the system will be applied to geography and religious education subjects, and in the second year of scientific high school, it will be applied to science, chemistry, and religious education subjects.

Former Minister of Education, Darem Tabbaa, provided a picture of the educational situation in Syria through several statistics in July 2023, including that out of a total of 22,000 operating schools before 2010, there are currently 14,000 operating schools, some of which were also damaged due to the earthquake disaster in February 2023, and that the education budget before 2010 was 14%, while it has currently reached 4% or 4.5% of the general budget.