The 2025 high school graduation exam is expected to include 4 compulsory subjects.

On March 17, the Ministry of Education and Training announced the draft plan for the 2025 high school graduation exam - the time when the first class of students studying the new general education program (2018 program) will graduate. To match the content of the new program, the graduation exam will also have many changes.

Accordingly, the 2025 high school graduation exam has four compulsory subjects: math, literature, foreign language and history. For the regular education system, the number of compulsory subjects is three, without foreign language. In addition, students must choose two other subjects from 7 subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, geography, economic and legal education, information technology, and technology.

Compared to the present, the total number of subjects remains the same, but instead of choosing a combination of natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) or social sciences (history, geography, civics), candidates can choose two subjects according to the group of subjects they registered to study at school. Literature is still the only subject tested on paper, the rest are multiple choice.

In addition, the ministry plans to pilot computer-based testing for multiple-choice subjects in some localities in the 2025-2030 period. After 2030, all 63 provinces and cities will be capable of organizing computer-based multiple-choice tests.

Candidates take the graduation exam at Vo Thi Sau High School (Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City) on July 7, 2022. Photo: Quynh Tran

The Ministry said that the question bank and exam papers for each subject will be completely rebuilt, focusing on assessing competency. However, building a question bank for 17 subjects is a big challenge, of which three subjects, economics and law, technology and information technology, will appear for the first time. In addition, by 2024, 12th grade textbooks will include many different sets.

The high school graduation exam from 2025 will still be under the general direction of the ministry, with localities directly organizing the exam and considering graduation recognition for candidates.

This set of assessments and examination plans ensures decentralization, increased autonomy and responsibility for localities; the organization of examinations and graduation recognition is streamlined, ensuring assessment of students' abilities according to the new program's output standards.

If this exam plan is approved, within 10 years (2015-2025), Vietnam's high school graduation exam will change three times.

In 2015, for the first time, the Ministry of Education and Training organized the national high school exam with two purposes: High school graduation and university and college admission (also known as the two-in-one exam). This was considered a breakthrough in exam innovation, combining two exams into one to reduce waste for society. However, the exam also caused many controversies such as multiple choice math tests, easy exam questions that created a "rain of 10s" in 2017, then suddenly too difficult, revealing an exam cheating scandal with hundreds of students having their scores raised in Ha Giang, Son La, Hoa Binh in 2018.

In 2020, when the revised Education Law took effect, the national high school exam was renamed the high school graduation exam. With the main goal of graduation, the exam was designed to be easier. However, the Ministry of Education and Training said that universities can still use the results of this exam for admission, or apply additional criteria and methods to enroll students in highly competitive majors.

According to VnExpress