How to take the exam for excellent students and enter specialized grade 10?

BIGGEST DIFFICULTY: TEACHING INTEGRATED pedagogy

Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh, Director of the Department of Secondary Education (Ministry of Education and Training), said: Recently, the Ministry of Education and Training has requested the Departments of Education and Training across the country to review and report on the situation of integrated teaching and learning and experiential activities. However, by the end of the deadline, the Ministry had only received reports from 33/63 Departments of Education and Training.

Compiling reports from 33 Departments of Education and Training, Mr. Thanh pointed out a series of difficulties that localities have encountered when teaching integrated learning, especially focusing on natural sciences (KHTN). The first difficulty to mention is the lack of teachers, the uneven structure of teachers among sub-subjects to ensure proper teaching; some teachers still lack experience in teaching integrated subjects or have not been fully trained. Some teachers are not qualified or confident enough to teach topics in the subject program; teachers have not been trained and fostered in integrated learning, so they have difficulty in teaching.

The Ministry of Education and Training has deployed training and removed difficulties in integrated teaching.

For educational institutions lacking teachers, it is very difficult to arrange and organize the timetable; if teaching knowledge streams in parallel to stabilize the number of periods/week for teachers, the topics may be disrupted, which is not in line with the spirit of integrated subjects because the program is designed according to logical knowledge streams. Organizing and evaluating students' learning outcomes is difficult because the program is taught by topics, so there are sub-subjects that are taught in the first half of the semester and tested at the end of the semester, so students' knowledge is not continuous...

Many representatives of the Department of Education and Training also mentioned the current situation of teacher shortage, which has forced localities to mobilize and second teachers to teach in different schools, teach extra hours, etc. Mr. Vu Duc Tho, Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Nam Dinh, said that in the field of Natural Sciences in Nam Dinh, there is a situation of local surplus and shortage of teachers; some schools have excess teachers for physics but lack teachers for biology, chemistry, or vice versa. The Department of Education and Training has directed the Department of Education and Training to be able to mobilize teachers from one commune to another, from one school to another. Recently, 182 teachers have been mobilized to ensure the structure of teachers among schools.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu, Head of Secondary Education Department, Yen Bai Department of Education and Training, also said that the initial difficulties were very great because Yen Bai has many inter-level schools, many of which are small in scale. There is an inter-level school with only 4 junior high school classes, with only 1 teacher teaching a subject in the integrated subject, so arranging and organizing the timetable is very difficult. Last year, Yen Bai also had to second teachers from lowland areas to highland areas, arranging 222 teachers to teach inter-school in districts and paying for extra teaching hours to overcome the shortage of teachers... According to Ms. Thu, the Ministry's recent guidance document has helped to gradually remove the difficulties, the Department of Education and Training requires schools not to require teachers to teach all subjects in the integrated subject as before, but to delegate the authority to the school.

Mr. Le Duy Tan, Head of the Secondary Education Department (Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training), also said that despite being trained and fostered in integrated teaching, some teachers are not confident in teaching this subject. The Ministry's guidance helps schools to proactively implement integrated teaching in many different ways suitable to actual conditions. However, the Department of Education and Training requires schools to choose the best way.

The Ministry of Education and Training pointed out the difficulties that localities encounter when implementing integrated teaching.

ONLY ARRANGE INTEGRATED TEACHERS WHEN THEY ARE QUALIFIED AND CONFIDENT

At the training session, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh emphasized the requirement that the assignment of teachers to teach Natural Science must ensure that their professional capacity is appropriate to the teaching content (according to the main content of the subject program or according to the assigned topics). It is encouraged to assign teachers who have received professional training to teach 2 content streams or the entire subject program, but it must be done step by step, ensuring the requirements of professional capacity and the confidence and readiness of teachers to ensure the quality of teaching.

Schools must ensure more effective implementation of flexible teaching plans in terms of time and timing for implementing major content circuits of the program or topics within each major content circuit of the program; ensure consistency with teacher assignment and schedule arrangement to meet requirements of scientificity (not to overload teachers), pedagogy (ensuring that the content taught before is the basis for the content taught after) and teachers' implementation ability.

The organization of teaching, testing and evaluation is also required by the Ministry of Education and Training: Teachers who teach any content must conduct testing and evaluation for that content, each student at least once in each semester, and the content with the longest duration in the semester must be evaluated at least twice.

THERE WILL BE NO SINGLE SUBJECT EXAM IN THE EXAM FOR EXCELLENT STUDENTS AND SPECIALIZED GRADE 10

At the training conference, 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 and entrance exams for 10th grade specialized high schools with integrated subjects. Currently, there are still single-subject exams, but by 2025, 9th grade students studying under the new General Education Program will study a number of integrated subjects. How will the entrance exam for 10th grade specialized schools be organized, and how will the provincial-level excellent student exam for 9th graders be organized?

Next year there will be about 400 integrated students graduating.

Mr. Vu Minh Duc, Director of the Department of Teachers and Educational Managers (Ministry of Education and Training), said: it is expected that next year, 28,000 teachers will be added to the national teaching staff. With integrated subjects, next year, the first batch of students (about 400 people) trained in integrated teaching will graduate, supplementing the teaching staff of this new subject.

Regarding this issue, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh said that the Ministry has not guided or directed these exams for a long time, but the localities have decided. Due to the characteristics of some integrated subjects, the Ministry of Education and Training will research and have instructions for localities to apply 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 this subject.

Similarly, with the entrance exam for grade 10 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 specialized subjects, the exam may focus on testing and evaluating the candidates' abilities in that specialized subject. "There cannot be any more subjects such as physics, chemistry, and biology because secondary schools do not have those subjects. The Ministry will have instructions for localities to apply in 2025," said Mr. Thanh.

1 teacher is under the direction of 5 levels

There are grounds to reflect that teachers and schools follow the instructions of the Ministry of Education and Training on flexibility in building timetables and educational plans, but the Department of Education and Training comes down to inspect and says it is not possible; or when the textbook authors give training, their instructions are different from the documents of the Ministry of Education and Training, who should we listen to?...

Mr. Pham Ngoc Thuong, Deputy Minister of Education and Training, emphasized: A teacher is currently under the management and direction of 5 levels (professional team, principal, Department of Education and Training, Department of Education and Training, Ministry of Education and Training), so it is impossible to "beat drums one way and blow trumpets the other" but must be unified in management and direction. Teachers and schools need to adhere to the program (because the program is the law) as well as legal documents of the education and training sector. If the oral instructions are not consistent with the documents, they are only for reference.

"Nearly 80,000 teachers directly teach integrated subjects, 5 subjects instructing 1 teacher must be unified, cannot let the situation happen where teachers do not know who to listen to," Mr. Thuong emphasized.

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