State Maturita Exam
“We have found a
reliable partner in
Logica. Logica have
proved that they
are able to ensure
safe technological
processing of the
unified State
Maturita Exam data
in accordance with
the legislation at an
extremely high
quality level, in a
very short time, and
with a professional
approach.”Ing. Pavel Zeleny, Managing
Director, CZVV
The State Maturita project has provided unbiased data about the real situation of the school
system in the Czech Republic.
In the school year 2010-2011 a unified State Maturita Exam has been introduced to all students in
the final year of secondary high schools in the Czech Republic. Most EU countries already have a
unified high school leaving examination. The reason behind the unified State Maturita Exam is to
ensure objectivity in testing the students and to develop a means of objective comparison of the
quality of all the high schools in the Czech Republic.
What CZVV needed
CZVV's goals are to ensure that the course of the State Maturita Exam is smooth and safe; including
the professional training and certification of school teachers; as well as the preparation of test
materials, groundwork materials, methodology materials; and ensuring the technology and logistics
of processing the result data and exam evaluations.
The major part of State Maturita Exam technology solutions have been designed and implemented
by Logica. Logica will also secure the operation of the technology solutions for the smooth and
proper course of the State Maturita Exam for the years 2012 to 2014 on the basis of an outsourcing
contract.
The Challenge
The main goal of the project has been to ensure a smooth, safe and correct course for the unified
State Maturita Exam, which will enable the state to monitor and evaluate the quality of the Czech
school system.
The strenuousness of the project has been mainly due to:
- An ambitious time-table plan - the implementation of technology solutions at schools and in the
new data centre had to be completed in 7 months. The first month was assigned for the preparation
of a detailed Implementation Project, while the absence of accountable people at schools during the
summer holidays had to be taken into account as well. At the same time, a detailed Implementation
Project had to be approved by the CZVV.
- The strong impact of the human factor - it was necessary to eliminate the influence of the human
factor, e.g. to take into account possible mistakes, which might occur because of quick
organisational changes at schools, etc. It was also necessary to develop time-saving solutions which
could be easily utilised by final users.
- Very high robustness and safety demands - the solution had to be designed with extra safety for
a failure-proof course in a 24/7 regime. At the same time, it was necessary to protect it against
cyber attacks and sensitive data leakage.
- Very high quality and speediness demands - any accidental benefit or harm caused by faulty
digitalisation and/or automatic processing of the answer sheets which are hand-filled by Maturita
examinees had to be eliminated. At the same time, electronic processing of the answer sheets had
to be completed within 24 hours, starting with scanning the documents and ending with their
placement in the long-term archive, including the time needed for their transport from schools to the
data centre.
Our Answer
We have created an effective and complex solution in record time. Its creation has included:
- Purchase and installation of data digitisation terminals (DDT) consisting of an office computer,
document scanner and high-capacity colour printer. These were distributed to almost 1,400
examination places in the Czech Republic.
- Foundation of a new data centre equipped with the necessary physical and virtual servers and
providing related technologies.
- Introducing the software application for digitisation of the answer sheets to all examination places,
and the implementation of centralised informational systems for collecting data from the answer
sheets and their transfer into computerised data, which could be later processed by CZVV.
- Establishing a document archive for long-term preservation of scanned answer sheets as well as
issued Maturita Certificates.
- Creating an information system for the main control centre, which serves as the main tool for the
survey and immediate correction during the preparation period and during the actual examination.
- Arranging high security of the data transfer as well as of the operation of the individual
A Success Story
We have proven that we are a reliable partner for the CZVV, that we can meet our obligations, and
that we can make a lot of extra effort to complete the project in an extremely short time, meeting all
the needs and demands from our client. Our joint project offers a technological solution, which
enables the CZVV to transfer 90GB of data, to process over 3 million digitised document pages and
over 50 million check boxes for computerised evaluation and for the preparation of manual
evaluation.
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