This year, Ukrainian students will have to take the Lithuanian exam in order to graduate from school. Some educators say it is virtually impossible to prepare for the exam on a par with native speakers in three years.
All graduates in Lithuania – ethnic Lithuanians and minority students alike – have to take the Lithuanian language graduation exam in order to receive a school diploma. For it, not only do they have to know grammar and spelling, but also familiarity with the Lithuanian literary canon, to be able to discuss the themes in the monumental eighteenth-century epic The Seasons by Kristijonas Donelaitis – the first published work of fiction in the Lithuanian language – the nineteenth-century Romantic poem The Forest of Anykščiai by Antanas Baranauskas, or the colossal three-volume 1930s novel In the Shadow of the Altars by Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas.
Ukrainian students who have found safety in Lithuania after the Russian invasion of their country must also study Lithuanian classics – and this year, they will have to take the same exam as their Lithuanian peers. Exceptions only apply to students who moved to Lithuania in their final or penultimate year at school.
Audronė Žukauskienė, a Lithuanian language teacher at Santaros Gymnasium in Vilnius, explains that, in order to pass the exam, Ukrainians students will be required to write a 400-word essay: either discuss a general question or give a literary analysis.
“The last [book that we studied] is The White Shroud by Antanas Škėma, and I would dare to say that they do understand the essence,” she says about her Ukrainian students. “And they could discuss the essence, what the author is saying, in the most elementary terms. But with a limited vocabulary.”
The efforts and progress of Ukrainian students are indeed palpable, she notes.
“They can understand the text they read and see the main subject, summarise the main idea, but when it comes to putting their thoughts on paper, they simply lack the vocabulary,” says Žukauskienė.
She therefore fears that many students may fail the exam and, as a result, will not receive a school diploma.
Meanwhile, Education Ministry spokeswoman Jolanta Navickienė believes the fears are baseless.
“The schools are providing all the opportunities for learning and examples show that those who put in the effort really succeed and pass the exam,” she says.
Agnė Klimčiauskaitė-Janavičienė, the headmistress of Gravita Schola, says it is unrealistic to prepare Ukrainians for the Lithuanian graduation exams on an equal footing with native-speaking children.
“It is possible, but only for highly motivated children. We can be proud of such exceptions, but there are many Ukrainian children. And three years is not enough to be able to analyse Škėma or discuss artistic language in the works of Vaičiūnaitė,” says Klimčiauskaitė-Janavičienė.
Education expert Ainius Lašas says the purpose of the exam is to measure how well students know what they have been taught – and so it is unfair to test Ukrainians on skills they have simply not acquired.
“If you need to master the entire Lithuanian language and literature programme in three years, while others spend 11–12 years on it, there is a fundamental difference,” says Lašas, a dean at the Kaunas University of Technology.
The sensible thing to do, he says, would be to test Ukrainian students only on what they have been taught in the last three years.
There are other things to take into account too, adds Klimčiauskaitė-Janavičienė.
“Let’s take into account they are not just any children. They are war children, for whom learning the language was definitely not the main concern on their mind in the first or second year,” she says.
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