The Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment (UCEQA) explained whether the National Multidisciplinary Test (NMT) included questions outside the school curriculum or tricky questions
The main session of the 2026 National Multisubject Test (NMT) is coming to an end, and some test-takers have already complained about the difficulty of certain questions. In particular, they cited questions that allegedly go beyond the school curriculum, as well as “tricky” phrasing.
Tetyana Vakulenko, head of the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment (UCEQA), emphasized that this year’s test fully complies with the approved curricula.
She noted: “This year’s NMT does not contain any tasks that were not part of the school curriculum.”
According to her, this is easy to verify by comparing the published sets of questions with the current curricula.
Vakulenko emphasized: “And this is very easy to verify. For example, take two similar sets that we’ve published and check every item, every question. All questions correspond to the EIT curricula.”
She added that the current curricula were developed back in 2018–2019 and remain relevant.
At the same time, the head of the UCEQA acknowledged that some students may not have mastered certain topics due to objective circumstances.
She explained: “I realize that under these circumstances, students may not have studied certain topics in school—for example, because they spent a long time in shelters—so those topics were skipped. But when we talk about university admission, we must understand that students need to catch up on these topics on their own.”
The UCEQA also denied the presence of “tricky” questions on the test.
Vakulenko stated: “There are no trick questions on the NMT. The questions are within the curriculum.”
She added that perceived difficulty is often related not to the format but to preparation:
“Any question for which it is difficult to find an immediate answer appears to be a trick question.”
The main session of the NMT runs from May 20 to June 25. An additional session will take place July 17–24.
Participants take four subjects (three required and one elective), and the testing takes place on a single day.
Thus, the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment (UCEQA) insists that all 2026 NMT tasks align with the school curriculum, and the test’s difficulty is determined by the participants’ level of preparation.
The Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment (UCEQA) has refuted these allegations.
A petition to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine calling for the cancellation of the mandatory NMT in mathematics in 2027 did not gather the required number of signatures for consideration.
Participants in the main NMT sessions, who took the test on June 4 and 5, can now view their official results on a 100–200-point scale in their personal accounts.
Earlier, the Ukrainian Center for Educational Quality Assessment commented on the situation in the Odesa region, where participants in the National Multisubject Test spent nearly 13 hours at the testing center due to prolonged air raid alerts. According to the agency, graduates were offered the option to reschedule the exam for an additional session, but they declined and decided to wait until the testing was over and take the NMT on the same day.
As a reminder, foreigners in Ukraine may be required to take a paid Ukrainian language exam.
