Jundze alarmed: hundreds of ninth-graders failing to earn basic education certificate
Writer and cultural commentator Arno Jundze has raised concerns that over a thousand ninth-graders in Latvia have failed centralized exams in the past two years. Meanwhile, the Education Ministry plans to change the exam rules.
As roughly 19,000 first-graders began school in Latvia this year, cultural journalist and chairman of the Latvian Writers' Union Arno Jundze drew attention to a different set of figures — those concerning students who fail to complete their schooling successfully.
Speaking on the TV24 programme "Preses klubs," Jundze noted that over the past two years, more than a thousand ninth-graders have failed to pass the centralized exams required to obtain a basic education certificate. In his view, this effectively means these children lack a basic education, raising broader questions about how the education system is functioning.
Figures point to a recurring issue
Publicly available data shows that in previous years, around 800 ninth-graders annually failed to reach the minimum threshold in these exams. This year, 750 students failed the mathematics exam, while 150 failed the Latvian language exam.
Jundze argued that the issue needs to be examined more broadly — to understand why a child who starts school with curiosity and enthusiasm ends up years later unable to pass final assessments. In his assessment, this points not merely to individual students' poor performance, but to the effectiveness of the education system as a whole.
Ministry plans changes
The Ministry of Education and Science announced in August that it plans to change the rules governing the ninth-grade centralized exams. The plan is to drop the minimum percentage threshold previously required to obtain a basic education certificate, though the exams will continue to serve as a tool for assessing students' knowledge and overall education quality. Additionally, starting in the 2026/2027 school year, a new centralized exam in natural sciences is set to be introduced for ninth grade.
