Contrasting trends between the North and South in the results of the national excellent student exam

The 2025 national excellent student selection exam has 13 subjects - Photo: NAM TRAN

The 2024-2025 National High School Examination for Excellent Students has 6,482 candidates. Candidates will take the exam at 68 examination councils with 13 subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, information technology, literature, history, geography, English, Russian, French, Chinese and Japanese. This year, for the first time, Japanese will be included in the exam.

Big difference

The examination board selected 3,803 prize-winning candidates, accounting for 58.68% of the total number of candidates taking the exam.

In terms of the total number of award-winning candidates, Hanoi leads with 200 awards, Ho Chi Minh City is second with 166 awards, and Hai Phong is third with 102 national excellent student awards.

Source: Ministry of Education and Training – Chart: MINH GIANG

The results show that the top 10 provinces and cities with the highest number of students winning prizes are all provinces and cities in the north central region and beyond, which have achieved high results in the national excellent student exam for many consecutive years.

Meanwhile, the number of prizes awarded in the southern provinces is quite modest. Of the 10 provinces with the least number of prize-winning candidates, 6 are in the southern provinces. In particular, Hau Giang province only has 5 national excellent student prizes.

By high school, Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted in Ho Chi Minh City has the largest number of national excellent student awards.

Data: Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training – Chart: MINH GIANG

This is also an "exception" when most of the high schools in the top 10 national excellent student awards are located in the northern provinces.

Some provinces have total prizes that are not in the top, but the province's specialized high schools have a very high number of prizes such as Le Khiet specialized high school, Le Quy Don specialized high school (Da Nang), Le Quy Don specialized high school (Ba Ria - Vung Tau)...

Good students from non-specialized schools

In addition to the difference in the number of national excellent student awards, the structure of students winning awards between the two regions is also opposite. While most of the students winning awards in the northern provinces come from specialized schools, in the south, many students come from regular schools.

Data: Ministry of Education and Training. Chart: MINH GIANG

Of the 63 provinces and cities, 18 provinces have no students outside of specialized schools winning national excellent student awards. Most of these provinces and cities are in the Northern and Central regions.

Ho Chi Minh City leads in the number of non-specialized high schools with students winning national excellent student awards with 12 schools. Hanoi ranks second with 11 schools. The remaining provinces are mostly in the Southern, Central and Central Highlands regions.

Notably, Soc Trang province. Although there were only 28 national excellent student awards, students from 9 non-specialized high schools in the province won 12 awards, the rest came from specialized schools.

Students of Vinh Long province's non-specialized school also contributed 6/17 national excellent student awards of this province.

Similarly, students from non-specialized high schools in Ca Mau contribute nearly half of the total number of national excellent student awards in this province.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/xu-huong-trai-nguoc-cua-hai-mien-nam-bac-tu-ket-qua-thi-hoc-sinh-gioi-quoc-gia-20250119120922907.htm