57 people asked for 309 National High School Exam scores to be raised in Ha Giang

The People's Procuracy of Ha Giang province has just issued an indictment on the case of score fixing in the 2018 National High School Exam in this province. Accordingly, defendant Trieu Thi Chinh (Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training of Ha Giang, Vice Chairman of the Examination Council, Head of the Examination Board) was prosecuted for the crime ofTaking advantage of position and power to influence others for personal gain, according to Article 358, Penal Code 2015; Pham Van Khuong (Deputy Director of the Department of Education and Training), Le Thi Dung (Officer of the Internal Political Security Department, Ha Giang Police) for the crimeTaking advantage of influence over people in positions of power and authority for personal gain,according to Article 366.

Defendants Nguyen Thanh Hoai (Head of the Department of Examination and Education Quality Management) and Vu Trong Luong (Deputy Head of the Department of Examination and Education Quality Management) were prosecuted for the crime ofTaking advantage of position and power while performing official duties,according to Article 365.

According to the indictment, defendant Khuong did not participate in the high school exam council because his child was taking the exam. However, when the exam council sent the exam papers to the candidates, Khuong went to Hoai's office to ask for help to consider helping his son get into Thai Binh Medical University.

Because Khuong could not remember his son's registration number, Hoai asked the examination room specialist to bring up the exam paper to help him find it. After Hoai found the exam paper, Khuong said: "Please take care of him."

More than ten days later, Khuong told Hoai: "I'm only worried that my son will fail the graduation exam, so I have to review all the exam subjects for me." Hoai agreed and as a result, the deputy director's son's score was raised by 13.3 points.

Like Mr. Khuong, defendant Dung was also not assigned to the exam but asked Hoai to raise the scores of 20 candidates. At the end of April 2019, Dung went to Hoai's house to ask for help in reviewing some candidates. 2 months later, Dung came to Hoai's house again and gave Hoai the list of candidates. As a result, all 20 candidates that Ms. Dung asked had their scores raised in the multiple-choice exam.

In early May 2018, Mr. Hoai called Luong to his office at the Department of Education and Training to say that he needed to raise the scores for "some special cases" in the 2018 National High School Exam. Hoai then sent Luong a list of 93 candidates who needed to raise their multiple-choice test scores three times.

In June 2018, after some acquaintances and colleagues asked him to increase the scores of candidates, Hoai downloaded the M9 list from the National High School Exam Management Software to his personal computer. Hoai then highlighted the candidates' information in yellow and filled in the scores that needed to be increased, then gave it to Luong.

The Ministry of Education and Training working group checked the exam in Ha Giang.

At the investigation agency, the Government defendant admitted and said that he only gave the list of 13 candidates to Hoai to check their scores. However, based on the documents, the authorities concluded that Chinh asked "to raise the scores, not to check the scores".

Deputy of Examination Department alone corrected 309 exams

Before the exam, Vu Trong Luong was asked by 57 acquaintances and colleagues to raise the scores of 309 exams of 107 candidates. The candidate with the highest score was 29.95 points (raising 4 multiple choice subjects). The candidate with the lowest score was 1 subject with 2.2 points.

To increase scores, on June 27, Luong downloaded the official answers to the exams published by the Ministry of Education and Training onto a computer containing multiple-choice test scoring software. From June 30 to July 2, 2018, Luong copied the downloaded correct answers and pasted them into 309 exams of various subjects on 249 original photos of multiple-choice answer sheets to increase scores for 107 candidates.

Defendant Vu Trong Luong before being arrested.

After processing the multiple-choice test, Luong backed up the results to a CD to send to the ministry and the chairman of the examination board. On July 7, Luong told Hoai that the number of candidates whose scores had been increased was so high that he was afraid that the Ministry of Education and Training would check the results when announcing the scores. Therefore, Luong suggested that the test papers of the candidates whose scores had been increased should be corrected to match the results on the CD sent to the ministry.

Hoai agreed and gave Luong the key to open the room containing the multiple choice test papers and the box containing the test papers. Luong then went to Ha Giang High School for the Gifted to open the room to get the test papers and transport them to the office at the Department of Education to correct the answers in the test papers to match the Excel file that had been backed up to a CD and sent to the ministry.

The indictment determined that during the investigation, the security investigation agency applied measures but could not collect evidence to prove that there was an element of profiteering. The families of the candidates did not admit to giving money or other valuable material benefits to ask for higher scores. Immediately after discovering the fraud, the Ministry of Education and Training evaluated the candidates before they were admitted to schools, so no one was forced to leave school.