Gearing up for the 2025 high school graduation exam

Innovation in exam preparation

Structure The 2025 high school graduation exam has many new points. Recognizing the difficulties that will be encountered, the Department of Education and Training of Hai Duong has directed high schools to develop teaching and review plans early, creating a proactive position and equipping students with the necessary knowledge and skills.

In order to have a focused and key teaching and review plan, all high schools in the province have surveyed the demand for choosing subjects for the 2025 high school graduation exam. This helps schools arrange students into appropriate classes, facilitating the implementation of the program of selected subjects and graduation exam review later.

Mr. Do Van Thien, Vice Principal of Doan Thuong High School, said that the school has surveyed the students' needs for choosing subjects, most of whom registered for physics and chemistry. In the afternoon extra classes, the school arranges the schedule according to the students' wishes to ensure both graduation exam review and university entrance exam review, capacity assessment, and thinking assessment. Professional groups and teachers proactively study the program, closely follow the structure, sample exam questions of the Ministry of Education and Training, and instructions from the Department of Education and Training of Hai Duong to build lectures as well as exam matrices. From there, students are regularly tested and evaluated, especially training them on how to do the exam according to questions with new formats.

“The school enhances interdisciplinary activities through observing lessons and visiting sample classes, from which each teacher adjusts teaching methods accordingly. At the same time, it creates conditions for teachers to participate in training courses and find rich learning resources to meet the requirements of innovation,” Mr. Thien added.

Mr. Nguyen Huu Gioi, Head of the Math Group at Thanh Mien High School, said that the innovation in the exam structure has caused many difficulties for teachers, forcing them to innovate teaching methods to equip students with good knowledge.

Accordingly, Mr. Gioi as well as teachers in the school are actively looking for teaching materials to meet the requirements of the exam; participating in professional associations and groups in the province and nationwide to have a rich source of materials, updating new knowledge. Applying interdisciplinary teaching methods with practical knowledge of social life to guide students to use subject knowledge to solve practical problems.

Recently, Gia Loc II High School was the first school in the province to invite experts from Hanoi National University of Education to consult, discuss, and resolve questions and concerns for teachers and students of the whole school related to the 2025 high school graduation exam.

Not only teachers, but most 12th graders also feel pressured because this is the first year of taking the high school graduation exam under the new general education program with many innovations. The most difficult thing is that the literature exam does not use materials from textbooks; the multiple choice exam has 2 new question formats. However, students all believe that with the active participation of schools, the encouragement and new ways of imparting knowledge from teachers, and their own initiative and effort, they will certainly have the best preparation before the exam.

Dang The Duyet, grade 12, Phuc Thanh High School (Kinh Mon) said that instead of worrying, he soon built a specific study plan in class as well as at home. In particular, he absorbed knowledge well in class, regularly practiced exam questions according to the new structure given by teachers to improve his test-taking skills.

“In addition to registering for physics and chemistry for the graduation exam, I have also built a review schedule to participate in the Hanoi National University's competency assessment exam,” Duyet said.

Assign competition targets to each teacher

In the 2024 graduation exam, the high school graduation rate of Hai Duong province reached 99.61%, an increase of 0.1% compared to 2023, the highest in the past 5 years. The average score of Hai Duong's high school graduation exam ranked 11th nationwide, up 1 place compared to last year...

However, according to the general assessment of the Department of Education and Training, the results have not yet shown a clear breakthrough compared to other provinces and cities in the Red River Delta region. The number of students achieving high scores is still low.

Many high schools have not maintained their rankings and are on a downward trend. Many schools are still in low positions. Some high schools have a large gap between graduation exam scores and classroom learning assessment scores…

To further improve the quality of high school graduation exams, this year the Department of Education and Training requires schools to register high school graduation exam quality targets using the average scores of each subject and subjects in a direction higher than last year.

This school year, Nam Sach II High School has 330 12th graders. The school's graduation exam rankings have increased over the past 4 years. In 2024, the school ranked 27th, leading schools in the same rank.

The school has set a target of ranking 25th in graduation exam quality in 2025. Teacher Nguyen Thi Thuy Ha, Principal of Nam Sach II High School, said that she has assigned competition targets to each subject group, and each subject group has assigned targets to each teacher in a higher direction than last year. Each teacher has a different way of calculating competition for each student. The school has made the graduation exam target an important and breakthrough task of the school year.

Mr. Do Duy Hung, Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Hai Duong, said that this is the first time the department has directed the assignment of specific competition targets for each subject like this. This is a measure to improve the quality of the province's high school graduation exam as well as strive to increase in the national rankings.

Along with that, the Department of Education and Training has directed schools to send key teachers to participate in training on the structure and format of high school graduation exams from 2025; training on testing and evaluation according to the 2018 general education program organized by the Ministry of Education and Training. The Department has developed a plan to invite pedagogical experts to train teachers of all subjects on the techniques of compiling test questions and evaluation according to the structure and format of high school graduation exams in 2025...

The Department of Education and Training will continue to organize two rounds of surveys on the quality of grade 12 students in the province after the end of the first and second semesters. At the same time, it is recommended that high schools direct professional groups to strengthen professional activities, study the structure of the high school graduation exam with new types of questions, study reference high school graduation questions; develop appropriate review materials to meet the requirements of the exam; actively exchange and share review materials, learn from experiences with units in the province; apply AI technology in preparing review materials for students; professional clusters strengthen the organization of activities within the cluster to improve the quality of high school graduation exams.