The Board’s duties
The Matriculation Examination Board, acting as an independent expert body, is responsible for the management, organisation and implementation of the Matriculation Examination. Independence refers in particular to the freedom to prepare and assess the examinations without influence from third parties, such as other public authorities, providers of general upper secondary education, higher education institutions and other stakeholders.
The Matriculation Examination Board is also responsible for administrative tasks related to the organisation of the Matriculation Examination in the Åland Islands.
Members and adjunct members of the Board
The Ministry of Education and Culture appoints a Chair and the necessary number of other members to the Matriculation Examination Board after consulting higher education institutions, the Finnish National Agency for Education and other relevant stakeholders. The Board’s term of office is three years. Its members must be persons with a strong knowledge of general upper secondary education and the subjects of the Matriculation Examination. Members are expected to play an active role in developing the examination, preparing the tests and assessing test performances. When serving on the Board, members act as independent experts and do not represent their background organisations.
At its general meeting, the Board appoints adjunct members to assist in the preparation and assessment of tests. Serving as an adjunct member requires subject expertise as well as knowledge of general upper secondary education and assessment. Typically, adjunct members work in their primary positions, for example, as teachers in general upper secondary schools or as university researchers.
Serving as a member or an adjunct member is a position of trust for which a fee is paid. There are approximately 450 members and adjunct members in total. The work follows the conflict of interest rules applicable to public administration. New adjunct members are recruited, for example, when strengthening the expertise of subject-specific sections or when additional censors are needed due to a large number of test performances. Those interested in serving as an adjunct member may express their interest by contacting the Board.
Governing bodies
The Board’s highest decision-making body is the general meeting. It develops the Matriculation Examination and is responsible for the quality of the tasks and assessment in the tests. The general meeting also decides on the grade boundaries for the tests on the proposal of the committees.
The Board has three committees, which approve the test tasks on the proposal of the subject sections.
The committees are:
- A1 Committee: worldview studies, philosophy, history, Evangelical Lutheran and Orthodox religion, social studies, and mother tongue and literature (Finnish, Swedish, Sámi languages)
- A2 Committee: biology, physics, chemistry, geography, mathematics, psychology and health education
- Language Committee: the second national language, foreign languages, and Finnish and Swedish as a second language and literature
The subject sections are responsible for developing the tests in each examination subject, as well as for drafting the test tasks and assessing the tests. A subject section typically has approximately 5–100 members or adjunct members, as the number of candidates in different subjects varies from a few candidates to over 20,000 candidates in a single examination round.
Development of the Matriculation Examination and the Board’s stakeholder cooperation
The Matriculation Examination Board has a secretariat that is responsible for the administration and development of the implementation of the examination and the Board’s administrative functions. The secretariat is headed by the Secretary General, who is appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture after consulting the Board. The staff of the secretariat are civil servants.
Every four years, the Matriculation Examination Board draws up a development and implementation plan for the Matriculation Examination. A monitoring group for the development of the examination supports both the preparation and implementation of this plan. The Board’s stakeholders, such as organisations representing subject teachers, upper secondary school students and education providers, are broadly represented in the monitoring group. The group is chaired by the Chair of the Board.
Close cooperation between the Matriculation Examination Board and education providers is a prerequisite for the implementation and development of the examination. General upper secondary schools and their principals are responsible for the practical arrangements of the examination, and cooperation with schools is continuous. The Board also regularly collects feedback and suggestions from its other stakeholders in order to further develop the implementation of the examination.
Disqualification
The provisions on disqualification of a public official laid down in the Administrative Procedure Act (434/2003) also apply to members and adjunct members of the Board. A member or adjunct member of the Matriculation Examination Board, a civil servant of the Board’s office, or any other person involved in the implementation of the examination within the Board or its secretariat must themselves refrain from duties in respect of which they are disqualified.
A person is disqualified, for example, if they themselves or a close associate is concerned in the matter to be decided or may otherwise benefit from it. For example, a member or adjunct member of the Board may not participate in drafting test tasks if a close relative or other person close to them is due to sit the Matriculation Examination in the near future. A person working as a teacher in a general upper secondary school may also not draft tests in the subject they teach or assess test performances from the school where they themselves teach.