"Students cannot find enough time for mathematics because they spend more time on Azerbaijani language and English language questions in the graduation exam. Adding an essay will make the situation even more difficult."
These words were stated by Rashad Jabbar, an education expert and mathematics teacher, in his statement to AzEdu.az.
"In the 2026 graduation exams, in my opinion, not difficult, but more time-consuming questions predominated. Gradually, the number of such questions is increasing - both in English and in Azerbaijani. A situation has already arisen where students cannot allocate enough time for mathematics, they find time to answer very few questions in this subject.
I think that adding an essay from next year will worsen the situation. I believe that adding an essay is not a very successful step. Students are already provided with enough listening texts. So what does the essay serve? If a student can understand the listening text and answer the questions, and knows grammar, this is sufficient at the high school level. Higher-level knowledge can be checked while studying at university and in master's admission exams.
The addition of an essay will, of course, also affect the share of mathematics in the overall results. Because students will have to spend more time on their native language and English. This is not a very successful choice and will not yield good results. It seems to me that it would be better if the exam model remained as it was. Listening questions were also sufficient to measure the students' level."
It would be more appropriate to include logic tasks instead of essay and text questions in the graduation exam:
"In the coming years, it is probably not expected that the number of those who show high results will increase again. Yes, there will be those who score 700 and 650 points, but compared to previous years, the number of those who show high results will most likely decrease. If the exam models are complicated in this way, such a result may emerge.
I would even consider it more appropriate to add logic instead of essays, listening texts, and similar questions in English. Because if we investigate, we will see that in other countries, mainly AQD, i.e., logic questions, are used in admission exams. In our country, we have eliminated the subject of logic and only check logical thinking at the master's level. First, they removed logic questions from the MIQ exams, and now we see that this subject is no longer given much space.
It seems to me that it would be more appropriate to include logic questions in the graduation exam instead of listening questions and essays in English, as well as text questions in Azerbaijani."
