Teaching many sets of textbooks, how is the 2025 high school graduation exam built?

At the workshop on preparing high school graduation exam questions from 2025 according to the new general education program held yesterday, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Ha, Deputy Director of the Department of Quality Management, Ministry of Education and Training said that instead of building exam questions in a confidential and closed manner as at present, the high school graduation exam question bank from 2025 onwards will be open, built on the basis of promoting the intelligence of the whole industry.

Accordingly, the exam questions will be selected from the survey questions of the departments, schools, and semester exams. The units will send the exam questions with the grading results for the specialized agency of the Ministry of Education and Training to analyze the exam questions using the exam theory. After analysis, the questions that meet the requirements will be put into the exam question library and from there, there will be a standardized exam question bank.

The process of building a library of exam questions will not require the current security procedures, even though it is not announced. Quality questions are selected for the library to improve the quality of the exam. Building a test bank as above will evaluate the quality of exam compilation, contributing to the evaluation of the quality of teaching and learning.

Currently, the Ministry of Education and Training has calculated that the organization of the high school graduation exam from 2025 will provide candidates with 36 combinations to choose from, while up to now, there have been only 2 combinations of social sciences or natural sciences. Therefore, the stages of making and printing exam questions must also have favorable changes, minimizing errors.

Mr. Le Hoai Nam, Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City, said that through an initial survey of 11th grade students, about 61% of students said they would take the university entrance exam in the country, 13% would study at colleges and vocational schools, 11% would work, and the rest would study abroad... With the current change in the number of exam subjects and optional subjects, Mr. Nam expressed his hope that universities would soon have a plan and announce the group of subjects for university entrance exams so that students could proactively prepare, not be confused or passive.

Mr. Dinh Van Kham, Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ninh Binh, also said that with the exam structure announced by the Ministry, the results will be highly classified and reliable for universities to base on for admission, and there is no need to have too many year-round competency assessment exams for university and college admission.

Regarding high school graduation, Mr. Kham suggested reducing the ratio of transcript scores to consider graduation because currently transcript scores are not really accurate in assessing, and there is still the phenomenon of "beautifying" transcripts. With that concern, he also suggested that schools limit admission based on transcripts.

Ms. Ha Thi Thanh Van, Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Lang Son, also hopes that universities will soon issue enrollment orientations from 2025 so that schools can organize teaching and learning and choose appropriate exam subjects.

Prof. Dr. Tran Diep Tuan, Chairman of the Council of Ho Chi Minh City Medical and Pharmaceutical Universities, said that the characteristics of the Medical and Pharmaceutical Universities are that they recruit students with a higher average score than many other schools. Therefore, he hopes that the exam will be more differentiated.

"Graduation exam scores are one of the effective admission channels for universities. However, medical schools require strict minimum input quality and have their own requirements, so our schools want the exam to have high classification and highly applicable questions to find candidates who meet the study program," said Professor Tuan.

Sharing the same view, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Vu Quoc Huy, Principal of Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy, said that in addition to direct admission channels, this unit has been using the high school graduation exam results of the Ministry of Education and Training for admission.

In the coming time, if the exam is carried out as the Ministry said, the medical school block is ready to continue using this result for admission.

However, like the representative of Ho Chi Minh City University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Professor Huy hopes that the exam will be more differentiated, and can separate more clearly between the two groups of average and good scores to meet the enrollment goals of universities, especially the Medical and Pharmaceutical sector.

Responding to this, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Ha, Deputy Director of the Department of Quality Management (Ministry of Education and Training) affirmed that although we have many sets of books, in the 2018 general education program, the requirements to be achieved in the program are the basic factors. Therefore, even though there are many sets of books, the questions must be based on the requirements to be achieved in the 2018 general education program.

Regarding the exam, Mr. Ha affirmed that the differentiation will have to be higher. Higher but certainly not more difficult.