The Ministry of Education and Training affirms that the exam ensures fairness and differentiation.

This afternoon, June 29, the Ministry of Education and Training held a press conference after the 2023 high school graduation exam sessions ended.

At the press conference, reporters raised many questions related to the exam, including doubts about the quality of the exam (the literature subject still relies heavily on model essays, with low differentiation) and the overlap of the literature graduation exam with the exam questions for this subject in some other local exams.

Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Ha, Head of the Exam Board (Steering Committee of the 2023 High School Graduation Exam)

The first principle is to ensure fairness.

Representative of the Ministry of Education and Training, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Ha, Head of the Exam Board (Steering Committee of the 2023 High School Graduation Exam), said that according to the direction of the Minister of Education and Training, the spirit of this year's exam is to maintain a stable structure like in 2022; the exam must be within the program, not including reduced sections or sections exceeding the program; the exam must have the best differentiation within the capacity, within the scope of a high school graduation exam.

"In the exam work, the first principle we set is to ensure fairness for candidates. Of course, fairness must also be ensured in other stages such as exam invigilation and grading to solve the overall problem. Fairness in exam making is demonstrated by having to differentiate candidates," said Mr. Ha.

According to Mr. Ha, although the test-making team are top experts, when they start to focus on making the test, the council still organizes training for these experts. There are seemingly simple knowledge such as levels of recognition, understanding, application, high application, but the Test Committee still discusses very carefully with the teachers. Basically, this year's test has the same structure as last year: about 50% level 1 (recognition), 25% level 2 (understanding), 25% levels 3 and 4 (application and high application).

Another thing (also to ensure fairness) that is highly regarded is the security of the question bank. The people who introduce questions, compose questions, and select them into the question bank are different people. The Exam Board does this based on experience from the old process (the 2021 question-making process). The bank now adjusts the process in such a way that the question writers are different from the question selectors.

Is there any overlap in the content of the essay questions with other exam questions?

Regarding the literature exam being said to have overlapping content with the mock exam in Nghe An and the 10th grade entrance exam in Hanoi (these exams will all be held in 2023), Mr. Ha affirmed that there was no overlap.

In the case of the literature exam that was said to be identical to the Nghe An mock exam, the material (the work " The Beggar's Wife" by writer Kim Lan) was identical, but the questions were completely different. This is normal for the writing section.

There are a total of 17 works in the program, but two of them are not part of the intersection between the high school program and continuing education . With the 2006 program, the Ministry of Education and Training cannot come up with anything other than 15 works. The important thing is that the questions are different. "Therefore, we do not see any duplicate topics," said Mr. Ha.

Mr. Ha continued to explain: "With the opinion that the essay questions are the same as the 10th grade entrance exam questions in Hanoi, we can see that the language materials are different and the questions are different. In Hanoi, the questions are about controlling emotions. As for the graduation exam questions, the higher questions are about balancing emotions."

Mr. Ha also said that this year, for the first time, the Ministry of Education and Training has introduced a process to control duplicate content of exams or published exam questions by using collected software and databases.

The amount of data that the Exam Board put in for review is about 120 GB, including all the exam papers, questions that the Exam Board searched for online, sent by the facilities, the Ministry of Education and Training actively searched for...; then used matching software for review.

This review was used for all 15 subjects, thus reducing many duplicates. Literature is a specific example. Without this software, the exam would have had a different essay; that essay would have been duplicated even more extensively.

But then Mr. Ha informed that the data used to check the exam did not include the literature test of Nghe An, because this test was not available online. Therefore, the software of the Ministry of Education and Training could not compare the Ministry's test with the test of Nghe An. "If there were, it would have been avoided. But as I said, there is no problem with duplication, because although the language is the same, the question order is different," said Mr. Ha.

As for the case of overlapping with the Hanoi question, the council discussed it after receiving the information. After the meeting, considering the different language and different questions, the council considered and still decided to use that question.

Mr. Ha said that in the literature test, there is a reading comprehension section and an essay section. For reading comprehension, the test is basically allowed to use materials that are not in the program. This is a new point. For this part, the test-making team always aims for content that is practically related to social issues, current issues, and educational issues. Because the materials are outside the program, the reading comprehension section is highly open.

Regarding the writing section, the 2006 High School Program will continue with the 12th grade students this year and next year (2024); then there will be 12th grade students studying the 2018 program. With the 2018 program, the Minister of Education and Training has directed the implementation of high openness in teaching and assessing literature, without any regulations on specific works.

"When we are not constrained by such constraints, we will solve the problem of creativity in teaching. But at the present time, due to the program framework, we can only do the best we can," Mr. Ha shared.

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