In the 2025-2026 school year, a number of high schools in Hanoi announced their enrollment targets and methods for grade 10, in which students with IELTS certificates will be admitted directly or given priority points. Many universities in recent years have combined admission with students with this certificate or equivalent.
According to the announcement of admission to grade 10 in the next school year of Nguyen Sieu Secondary and High School (Cau Giay District, Hanoi), some priority subjects are given, including students with Cambridge English/IELTS/SAT/AP certificates above their age level (priority is given to candidates who have taken the certificate exam at VN236) and students with other international certificates certified by universities and prestigious international organizations recognized by the Department of Quality Assessment, Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).
Specifically, the school prioritizes students with IELTS from 6.0, Cambridge PET from 160 or higher, who are exempted from the English test. In addition, students with high English certificates can be considered for SAT differentiation from the beginning of grade 10 and, in addition to academic awards and social projects, will be considered for scholarships of 10-100% of tuition fees. However, the school representative affirmed that the foreign language certificate is just a tool, so candidates will only be exempted from the English entrance exam, not added points or direct admission.
However, there are also schools that apply direct admission and give priority to candidates with IELTS certificates in previous years, such as the Lomonosov Education System (Hanoi), which has stopped applying this policy after several years of implementing direct admission and giving priority to this group of students. Since 2021, Nghe An is the first locality in the country to apply the policy of direct admission of candidates with IELTS to public grade 10. In the 2023-2024 school year, candidates who meet the entrance requirements to Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted must achieve a minimum of 7.0 IELTS or higher. However, this school year, Nghe An has abandoned the regulation of direct admission of candidates with international certificates according to the province's foreign language development project.
This is explained that since the end of February 2024, the Ministry of Education and Training has requested that localities not directly recruit or add points to candidates who have won provincial-level excellent student awards and have foreign language certificates in the 10th grade admission process according to regulations.
According to Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh - Director of Secondary Education Department (Ministry of Education and Training), adding points or directly admitting candidates to grade 10 with IELTS certificates can cause unfairness to candidates in areas with difficult socio-economic conditions.
Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Xuan Nhi - former Deputy Minister of Education and Training acknowledged that the IELTS certificate fever has not only appeared in Hanoi but also in many localities across the country, many schools apply direct admission to candidates with IELTS scores to enter the school. For non-public schools, due to different training systems, the requirement to ensure foreign language ability to study is completely normal, depending on the school's goals, but if applied in public high schools, it is not appropriate, not fair to all students.
Not only at the secondary and high school levels, but also for university admissions, the combined admission method with IELTS certificates or international foreign language certificates was also used by more than 40 schools in the last admissions season. This is also a trend applied by many universities around the world for admissions in recent years. However, due to the recent increase in IELTS certificate cheating, many prestigious universities in the world have adjusted their admissions policies, especially regarding requirements related to IELTS certificates.
In Vietnam, at the end of 2022, there was an event of suspending all IELTS exams in Vietnam due to not ensuring compliance with the regulations on joint organization of foreign language proficiency exams in Circular No. 11. The representative of the Ministry of Education and Training at that time said that, besides the positive aspects, the joint organization of foreign language proficiency exams in Vietnam also has many shortcomings. The negative signs mentioned such as: proxy exams, fraud in records, forgery of documents... caused bad public opinion, affecting the rights of certificate holders, affecting the rights and interests of organizations that implement exams and issue certificates seriously. Therefore, it not only requires close involvement of management agencies, increased inspection of conditions and criteria for joint organization of international and Vietnamese certificate exams, but also strict sanctions if violations are detected to protect the reliability of these exams.
Source: https://daidoanket.vn/dam-bao-do-tin-cay-voi-chung-chi-ngoai-ngu-10297711.html
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