Exams are not a game of chance.

Candidates taking the 10th grade entrance exam in Hanoi. Photo: Quang Vinh.

According to the draft, there will be two methods of admission to grade 10 high school, including admission by examination and entrance exam. With the admission method, the basis for admission is the training results and learning results of the years of general education program at the junior high school level or the continuing education program at the junior high school level of the student. If a grade is repeated, the results of the repeated year of that grade will be used.

As for the entrance exam method, the number of subjects is 3, including Math, Literature and one subject randomly drawn by the Department of Education and Training from the remaining subjects in the general education program at the secondary level. The third subject is announced before March 31 every year. For admission to specialized high schools, each specialized subject has an additional specialized exam subject.

Before the information about randomly drawing subjects for the 10th grade entrance exam as planned above, students, parents, and many experts and teachers all expressed concern and were not interested. Most of them suggested that the subjects should be fixed so that students can review easily.

Ms. Nguyen Phuong Nga - teacher of Linh Dam Secondary School (Hoang Mai District, Hanoi) said that announcing or defining the subjects for the 10th grade entrance exam early will help teachers, students and the school be more proactive in the teaching - learning - review schedule. From many years of teaching experience, teachers in Hanoi also believe that spending more time teaching - learning - reviewing subjects that will be tested is inevitable, also to hope that students will have good results. The goal of both the old and new education programs is to equip learners with general knowledge.

In Hanoi, for many years, candidates taking the 10th grade entrance exam have taken three fixed subjects: Math, Literature, and Foreign Language. Since 2019, the fourth subject has been announced every March. However, the four-subject entrance exam method has only been maintained in 2019 and 2020. From 2021 to present, in order to reduce pressure on students due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hanoi has maintained a stable entrance exam method with three subjects: Math, Literature, and Foreign Language.

Similarly, for many years, students in Ho Chi Minh City have also taken exams in 3 subjects: Math, Literature, and Foreign Language to enroll in grade 10. Mr. Ho Tan Minh - Chief of Office of the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City expressed his desire to maintain and grant autonomy in choosing the 3rd subject in the grade 10 entrance exam as it is now. Each locality builds different educational development strategies, depending on the reality and specifics.

Regarding the 10th grade entrance exam as well as the selection of subjects, at the recent regular Government press conference, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Pham Ngoc Thuong said that the Ministry is studying the forms to choose the third subject, maybe this year it will be a social subject, next year it will be a natural subject, the year after that it will be another subject, or it can be drawn by lot. The Ministry of Education and Training has conducted a comprehensive survey and very carefully evaluated the 10th grade entrance exam in the past 10 years. Thereby, it can be seen that without a framework and decentralization, the management work will still have shortcomings. Mr. Thuong analyzed: Through statistics, we see that the method is basically stable. Regarding the number of subjects, most provinces choose 3 subjects. What is the third subject? Foreign Language, Information Technology or other subjects, there are no unified regulations, creating inadequacies and making it difficult to check and evaluate the central management work as well as evaluate the level in the teaching process of the facility.

According to Deputy Minister Pham Ngoc Thuong, the third subject selection method is of most concern. If localities choose by themselves, this may be affected by the subjective will of the head, causing many consequences. But if a fixed subject is chosen, the Ministry is worried that it will cause a situation of rote learning and lopsided learning. Thus, students are not fully prepared with the qualities and abilities required by the new program. Currently, the Ministry of Education and Training is in the process of collecting opinions to develop a draft Circular with the viewpoint of listening to opinions from the grassroots level but on the principle of ensuring unified regulations on state management and ensuring scientific assessment and ensuring output according to the goals of the 2018 General Education Program, suitable for the level of education.

Dr. Nguyen Tung Lam - Chairman of the Board of Dinh Tien Hoang High School (Hanoi) said that the Ministry of Education and Training is concerned that fixed exams for all 3 subjects will cause skewed learning, which is reasonable. However, it is also necessary to consider another aspect: drawing lots for one of the subjects can make any subject an exam subject and there may be a situation where students will have to take extra classes to practice for all subjects. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully consider the option of choosing subjects for exams by random drawing, because there has not been any scientific research that accurately assesses whether exams will promote learning in a positive direction.

Source: https://daidoanket.vn/thi-cu-khong-phai-tro-choi-may-rui-10292019.html