2019 National High School Exam: Local officials are not allowed to grade exams in the province

Mr. Mai Van Trinh, Director of the Department of Quality Management (Ministry of Education and Training) said this when talking to the press about solutions for the 2019 national high school exam.

Regarding solutions to fill the “gaps” in the 2018 national high school exam, Mr. Mai Van Trinh, Director of the Department of Quality Management (Ministry of Education and Training) said that most localities have made efforts to organize the exam well. The violations of some provinces of Ha Giang, Son La, and Hoa Binh are isolated and serious.

These violations are an opportunity for us to review and organize the exam better next year. Accordingly, the exam in 2019 will be organized in the same way as in 2017 and 2018 with specific adjustments to gain more trust from society.

Mr. Mai Van Trinh, Director of Department of Quality Management (Ministry of Education and Training).

So what exactly is that adjustment, sir?

We review all processes and regulations, improve the quality of the question bank. On that basis, we build national high school exam questions that are suitable for the test taker's time.

At the same time, continue to improve exam technologies, especially improve exam marking software to enhance security and prevent violations; if there are violations, they are easy to detect and handle so that the exam takes place fairly and transparently.

Pay attention to selecting personnel to participate in the examination stages, including selecting people who are knowledgeable about the job, have capacity and responsibility; thoroughly train those participating in marking the exams; inspection and supervision work must be more substantive and effective.

In particular, for the 2019 exam marking, the Ministry will organize exam marking in clusters with the principle that exam marking officers will not mark exams for students from their own province.

Thoroughly apply information technology, continue to delegate power to localities

The violations in this year's national high school exam were due to human intervention, directly the intervention of the exam marking staff themselves. So, in the 2019 exam marking work and the following years, how will the application of information technology (IT) be implemented to reduce human intervention, both in organizing and marking the exam?

The application of IT in the national high school exam is very important. After 4 years of organizing the exam, it can be seen that the support of IT is getting better and better, especially the software for organizing the exam and marking the exam.

Through the events of 2018, we see that we need to further improve the application of IT, especially in supporting the grading process. Even for essay-based tests such as Literature, IT also provides good support in making and grading the test. For multiple-choice tests, we have adjusted to increase security and encrypt the grading data.

With this solution along with management and process solutions, the application of IT in exam marking in particular and exam organization in general is more effective.

He said that IT will be used to increase exam marking to prevent cheating. So, what will be the role of localities in next year's exam? What solutions are there to monitor localities during the exam organization and marking process?

First of all, we continue to affirm that the violations of the recent provinces are very serious, but we must also properly acknowledge the efforts of most localities in organizing the exams well.

On that basis, we cannot not hand over the responsibility to the local authorities because of some individual violations of some provinces because organizing exams is also part of the teaching and learning process and is also the social responsibility of the local authorities.

In addition to giving autonomy to localities, we must have management solutions and technical solutions to ensure that local rights are clearly defined and seriously implemented within the framework of regulations, statutes and supervision, and of course, with the application of IT. At the same time, there must be supervision by inspectors to achieve high efficiency.

The exam is reliable enough for schools to consider.

Many people are concerned about the quality of the exam. Is it really too difficult to create quality differentiated exams that ensure the two set goals?

The nature of the National High School Exam is organized on the basis of the Law on Education and the Law on University Education, especially the guidance of Resolution 29 and Resolution 44 of the Government.

Accordingly, we innovate the method of high school graduation and university and college admission in the direction of reducing pressure, reducing costs, having high reliability and moving towards organizing a common exam.

Thus, at the end of 12 years of high school, we organize the national high school exam to measure and evaluate the learning outcomes at the general level of students in 12 years of study.

That is the purpose of the National High School Exam. That is why, in the design of the National High School Exam, most of the questions are about general education, accounting for 60-70%. Of course, general education is still classified to distinguish the quality of each student's learning, so there are advanced questions. Therefore, in the structure of the exam, there are such questions.

The questions are gradually increased in difficulty to make it easier for students to do the test and the Department of Education and Training uses these results to consider graduation for students. For higher education institutions, it is only used as a basis for enrollment according to the spirit of autonomy stipulated in the Law on Higher Education.

Therefore, the level of use of the results of the National High School Exam in different schools depends on the needs of the schools. Some schools use the entire exam, some use preliminary results, and some use these results for admission in combination with other forms of admission.

I believe that if the results of the National High School Exam do not meet the needs of universities, then universities will not use these results as a basis for admission.

The 2019 National High School Exam continues to be based on student classification.

As he assessed, the most important goal of the exam is to evaluate after 12 years of study, but in reality, for many years now, universities have used the results of this exam for university admission. The Minister of Education and Training also said that the upcoming exam will not serve the 2-in-1 exam. This makes many people wonder and they believe that in the coming years, many universities will also use the results of the National High School Exam for university admission?

As I said above, universities are capable and intelligent enough to decide which admission method to use for their school, meeting the requirements as well as the prestige and class of that school.

Therefore, as long as the National High School Exam is still reliable enough, I believe that educational institutions will rely on it for enrollment and in the spirit of universities being autonomous in their enrollment work.

If the national high school exam is not good, the results are problematic, and schools do not trust it, then there certainly cannot be any policy forcing schools to use these results.

Our mission is to organize a standardized national high school exam with reliable results, accurately assessing students' abilities to achieve the set goals and, more importantly, to analyze and evaluate the results of the national high school exam, adjusting the teaching and learning process in schools so that the quality of teaching and learning in general schools is improved every year.

The university will not conduct examinations in the locality where it is located.

Sir, many candidates do not want to take the university entrance exam but want to have a good graduation certificate, but to do so, they have to do the whole exam. So, next year, should the exam be divided into 2 parts, 1 for graduation, 1 for university?

In 2019, continuing to organize the exam locally, it is necessary to put the interests of students and people first, the management responsibility of teachers and related parties must make this exam better.

We are strengthening the role of universities in all stages, including exam invigilation. We are considering the possibility that universities will not perform exam invigilation in the localities where they are located.

Regarding the exam, the proposed idea is to divide it into 2 parts. In 2014, when designing the National High School Exam, we also discussed it very carefully. If we organize 2 exams like that, the following 2 problems will arise:

The first,does not fully reflect the nature of the National High School Exam. This exam cannot be 1 + 1 = 2.

Monday,will cause difficulties in organizing the exam, which leads to the opportunity for students to use this part to do another part, creating unfairness and causing complications. Therefore, we have to design the exam as it was.

Thank you very much!