Russian schools have always given grades on a scale from one to five.
three (“satisfactory”). These three grades were considered positive.
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change it have usually been proposals to introduce a 100-point or a
10-point scale, or proposals that grade two be changed into a passing
grade, but none of these proposals were ever realized. A four-grade
scale places both teachers and students in a rather difficult position.
Not every two fives are equal to each other, even if they are given by
the same teacher. The same can be said of two fours and, even more
so, two threes. About grade three in general, it has often been said that
this is a “rubber” grade which is given to students both for work that
is quite decent — although not on the level of a four — and whenever
the teacher simply does not wish to give a two. Teachers have tried
to get out of this predicament by adding pluses and minuses to the
grades (“five minus,” “four plus,” “three minus,” and so on), but this
is prohibited by the Ministry of Education’s instructions. In students’
workbooks, however, one can come across such wonderful grades as
“three minus minus.”
Concrete, specific criteria for grading were developed for differ-
ent subjects in the secondary school curriculum. They defined the
requirements that a student’s oral or written response had to satisfy
in order to receive a particular grade. Thus, for example, in 1977, a
letter from the Ministry of Education of the RSFSR recommended that
an exam consisting of five problems should receive a grade of two “if
the solutions to three (or more) problems contain crude mistakes (one
or more)” (Chudovsky, Somova, and Zhokhov, 1986, p. 6). A grade
of four, on the other hand, should be given if “the work has been fully
completed and contains no crude mistakes, but contains small mistakes
or more than two minor deficiencies, or small mistakes and minor
deficiencies; [or] if four problems are solved without mistakes, but one
problem either is not solved or contains mistakes” (p. 6). In addition,
the letter explained which mistakes ought to be considered crude,
which mistakes ought to be considered small, and which mistakes
should be regarded as minor deficiencies.
Naturally, not everything in these criteria was precisely formulated;
but even writing down some criteria proved sufficiently useful. Thus,
for example, the guidelines underscored the fact that grades could not
be lowered because students had made notations and then erased them
or crossed them out in doing their work; such erased or crossed-out
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notations, it was pointed out, indicated that students were thinking
and could not serve as grounds for lowering their grade. Indeed, not
a few teachers would give students a grade of two for poor behavior in
class and other such offenses or, on the contrary, would give a grade
of five for arranging display cases in the mathematics classroom and so
on, which distorted the overall picture of the students’ success rate.
As will be discussed in detail below, during the school year a student
receives grades on both tests and quizzes as well as for oral responses
in class and so on. These grades are recorded in a special journal
and determine each student’s final grade for the class. In grades 5–9,
final grades are given at the end of each quarter (the first quarter is
September to October, the second quarter November to December,
the third quarter January to March, and the fourth quarter April to
May). In grades 10–11, final grades are given every half-year: the
first half-year covers September to December, and the second half-
year January to May. Some schools receive special permission from the
Committees on Education to divide the school year into trimesters.
The idea that the final grade should represent the arithmetic mean
of all the grades received by a student has been criticized, but this
arithmetic mean has in fact typically determined the final grade in
practice. Very often, even very strong students have been prevented
from getting a grade of “excellent” for the quarter if they received a
single grade of two during the quarter. On the other hand, a large
number of twos could also prevent a student from getting a grade
of “satisfactory,” even a fabricated one. Many teachers have resolved
this issue by writing “pencil twos” in their journals and subsequently
eliminating them with the help of an eraser. The term “concealed
two” or “covered two” was widely used: a two would be concealed
under a three (usually inflated), as students would be given repeated
opportunities to retake tests or rewrite answers that they had failed to
learn earlier.
We have already indicated that starting at a certain point there
were practically no failing students in the USSR. But special note
was also taken of students who had achieved high levels of excellence,
particularly the so-called “medalists” — students who had graduated
with a gold or silver medal. According to established rules, gold medals
