Students in grades 9 and 12 get acquainted with the new exam orientation

The Ministry of Education and Training has just issued guidelines for implementing secondary education tasks for the 2024-2025 school year, the year of implementing curriculum and textbook innovation for grades 9 and 12.

This is also the first batch of students to take the 10th grade entrance exam and high school graduation exam according to the new program with major changes compared to before, both in the number of subjects and the way the exam questions are created.

In terms of testing and assessment for secondary schools, the Ministry of Education and Training requires: "Strengthen the construction of question banks and test matrices according to the requirements of the subject program; prepare 9th grade students to get acquainted with the orientation of the entrance exam for grade 10, and 12th grade students to get acquainted with the orientation of the high school graduation exam."

Grade 11 students entering grade 12 in the new school year will be the first generation to take the high school graduation exam according to the 2018 General Education Program.

AVOID PUTTING TEXTBOOK MATERIALS IN LITERATURE TEST QUESTIONS

In the document guiding the tasks for the next school year, the Ministry of Education and Training noted: Assessing secondary and high school students in accordance with regulations, not exceeding the requirements of the program, paying attention to some contents such as: developing a testing and assessment plan in accordance with the teaching plan; strengthening the implementation of periodic testing and assessment through practical exercises and learning projects.

Notably, the document of the Ministry of Education and Training stated: "For the subject of literature, avoid using texts and excerpts that have been learned in textbooks as test materials to assess reading comprehension and writing skills in periodic tests to overcome the situation where students only memorize lessons or copy content from available documents."

Regarding this content, Dr. Trinh Thu Tuyet, former literature teacher at Chu Van An High School (Hanoi), said: "Using texts outside of textbooks as reading and discussion materials is inevitable to eliminate the situation of teaching and learning according to model texts, but when our reading culture is not high, the structure and format of the exam really need a suitable roadmap, ensuring the appropriateness, integration, inheritance, continuity of thinking..., both reducing pressure on students and increasing scientificity, creating organic connections between elements in an entire exam."

Therefore, Ms. Tuyet suggested: To reduce pressure on students, to create continuity in thinking, and connection between elements in a whole, I would like to propose an immediate solution: Whether writing a social argumentative essay or a literary argumentative essay, we should also ask students to discuss a social issue or a literary issue raised in the reading comprehension text.

New school year, all students at all levels follow the 2018 General Education Program

HOW IS THE EXAM FOR EXCELLENT STUDENTS AND ADMISSION TO SPECIALIZED GRADE 10?

Previously, the Departments of Education and Training also requested the Ministry of Education and Training to provide guidance and direction on the exam for gifted students, the entrance exam for grade 10 of specialized high schools with integrated subjects. Currently, there are still single-subject exams, but by 2025, grade 9 students will study under the general education program and will study a number of integrated subjects. How will the entrance exam for grade 10 be organized, especially for specialized subjects in specialized schools, and the provincial-level excellent student exam for grade 9?...

Regarding this issue, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh, Director of the Department of Secondary Education (Ministry of Education and Training), stated: The Ministry has not provided guidance or direction for the above exams, but has decided for localities. Due to the characteristics of some integrated subjects, the Ministry of Education and Training will research and provide guidance for localities to implement from 2025. However, the general spirit is that there will be no single-subject exams in both of these exams because according to the principle of the curriculum, the subject will be tested in that subject. The 2018 General Education Program studies natural sciences, not physics, chemistry, biology; the same goes for history and geography, so the exams will test integrated subjects, not single subjects in integrated subjects.

According to Mr. Thanh, the 9th grade excellent student exam in integrated subjects also helps schools and localities evaluate their students' comprehensive abilities, in accordance with the goals when designing the subject.

Similarly, for the entrance exam to grade 10 of specialized high schools, students can be recruited into specialized physics, chemistry, and biology classes separately, but when taking the exam from grade 9 to grade 10, they still have to take the natural science exam, in which, depending on the purpose of recruiting a specialized subject, the exam may focus on testing and evaluating the candidate's ability in that specialized subject.

"Physics, chemistry, and biology cannot be tested anymore because secondary schools do not have those subjects. The Ministry will have guidelines for localities to apply in 2025," said Mr. Thanh.

High school graduation exam subjects from 2025

According to the decision of the Ministry of Education and Training, the high school graduation exam from 2025, the first year students graduate under the 2018 General Education Program, will only take 4 subjects. Of which, there are 2 compulsory subjects: literature and math; 2 optional subjects (among the remaining subjects studied in grade 12 including: foreign languages, history, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, economic and legal education, information technology, technology).

In the high school graduation exam from 2025, there will only be one subject, literature, which will be tested in essay format with a time limit of 120 minutes. The exam consists of two parts: reading comprehension (4 points) and writing (6 points). The remaining subjects will be tested in multiple choice format; in which, math will take 90 minutes, the remaining subjects will take 50 minutes.

Tue Nguyen

How to understand not using text from TEXTBOOKS to write essay questions?

First of all, we need to understand what are the "texts and excerpts learned in textbooks" as required by the Ministry of Education and Training? "Text" here can be a short story, an informational text, a poem that is relatively completely quoted in the question. And "excerpt" is just a part of a text of a certain genre that is quite long. Thus, with the above requirement, the literature test cannot take the excerpted material to study in the textbook. However, it is still allowed to take other passages of the studied text. For example, with the Tale of Kieu, the test maker cannot take excerpts learned in the book, but can take another passage. This is clearly shown in the Ministry of Education and Training's illustrated literature test for the upcoming 2025 high school graduation exam, when the question gives an excerpt from the epic Dam San. This epic is studied in the program, and the passage the test illustrates is not in the textbook (of all 3 sets of books).

The practice of not using textbooks for literature tests has been applied by schools from junior high to high school for many years now. From the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years, junior high and high school students have periodically tested literature using materials outside of textbooks for both reading comprehension and writing. Students studying the 2018 program (grades 6, 7, 8, 10, 11) in the past two school years are quite familiar with this type of test.

The recent directives of the Ministry of Education and Training on avoiding including textbooks in literature tests, although not new, will be a huge challenge for 9th and 12th graders in the upcoming 2024-2025 school year. Because in the past 2 years, although the periodic literature test used materials outside of textbooks, most of them were from schools, but for the 10th grade entrance exam and high school graduation exam in 2025, the Departments of Education and Training and the Ministry of Education and Training set the questions.

For the high school graduation exam, 12th grade students are mature enough to think and feel a completely new literary work (even if not thoroughly), but 9th grade students taking the 10th grade entrance exam is a challenge.

For a long time, the 10th grade entrance exam only had a dozen Vietnamese literary works. Teachers and students reviewed them over and over again, but when taking the exam, some students could not do the test, many received zero points or zero points. From next year's exam, students will have to get used to completely unfamiliar works, so the challenge will be even greater.

Currently, the Ministry of Education and Training has announced the structure of the literature exam for 2025. For the 10th grade exam, most localities have not yet announced any changes. In order to have thorough preparation for students, the education sector of localities needs to soon have a plan to orient the 10th grade exam.

Tran Ngoc Tuan - Nguyen Cao

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/hoc-sinh-lop-9-12-lam-quen-voi-dinh-huong-de-thi-moi-185240804201943377.htm