Education Ministry urged to reconsider 2-in-1 exam
Analysts say that nearly 100 percent of students can pass the new 2-in-1 exam, which indicates it is ineffective.
All cities and provinces have reported a high percentage of students passing the national high school finals. The proportions are 99.83 percent in Binh Duong, 99.06 percent I Ben Tre and 98.8 percent in Binh Phuoc.
The poor mountainous provinces in the north also have more than 90 percent of students passing the exam.
Luong Hoai Nam, an independent education expert, commented that the high proportion of 98-99 percent of students passing the exam doesn’t truly reflect education quality and the so called ‘achievement disease’ still exists.
“No need to organize the national exam once nearly 100 percent of students can pass it. Let’s gather strength on the entrance exam to universities and junior colleges,” Nam said. “Don’t persist in the 2-in-1 exam model anymore.”
Instead of the separated high school graduation exam and the university entrance exam, students nowadays only have to sit the 2-in-1 national high school exam. This helps cut a big financial cost for both students and the universities and colleges.
Nguyen Duy Binh, History Dean of the Hanoi University of Education, commented that since the national exam is equal to both the high school finals and university entrance exam, the exam questions must be easy enough for students with basic knowledge to solve.
Since the exam questions are easy, Binh believes the number of students passing the exam is high.
“Why does the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) still insist on organizing the exam if everyone knows for sure that nearly 100 percent of students would pass it?” he said, adding that there is no need to organize a costly national exam just to find out if several students cannot graduate from high school.
Binh believes that it would be better to base graduation on their learning records. Instead of organizing such a costly national exam, it would gather strength on improving teaching quality.
As for enrollment for universities, it would be better to give schools the right of self-determination. The schools such as medical and civil engineering will choose students with high exam scores because they need the best students.
Meanwhile, some training majors don’t need students with 10 score on the math exam. As for pedagogical schools, they may need preselection because of the need to find candidates who have suitable characteristics to become teachers./.
VNF/Vietnamnet