High School Graduation Exam 2025: Many subjects have a sharp decrease in the number of candidates

Imbalance in exam subjects

High school graduation exam 2025, Tuong Duong 1 High School has 325 candidates registered for the exam. However, of these, only 9 students registered for English, 8 students registered for Physics and 22 students registered for Chemistry. The rest registered for Social subjects.

Teacher Le Ngoc Hung - Principal of the school, said that "this number is not too surprising", because each year only about 30 students of the school wish to go to university. Therefore, to ensure the goal of passing the graduation exam, students often choose subjects that are easy to get points.

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The entrance score at our school is only about 6.7 points, which is the same as the score of a subject in a normal school. Therefore, the students' ability is limited and they often have difficulty in calculation subjects.

As for English, for ethnic minority students, this is the third language. Therefore, compared to other subjects, they often do poorly in this subject.

Teacher Le Ngoc Hung

At Dien Chau 4 High School (Dien Chau district), in addition to the two compulsory subjects of Math and Literature, 100% of grade 12 students (529/529 students) registered for the exam. Of the remaining subjects, the two subjects with the lowest number of registered candidates are English (90 students) and Biology (43 students).

According to Mr. Nguyen Van Bang - Principal of Dien Chau 4 High School, because English is no longer a compulsory subject in the graduation exam, the number of registrations has decreased sharply compared to previous years. "English is not an advantage for students in rural areas, the quality level is still limited, so many students choose subjects that are strong and can easily achieve higher scores to ensure graduation."

The exam room is "empty" of candidates

The 2025 High School Graduation Exam is the first exam organized under the 2018 General Education Program, with many innovations in the organization method. Notably, this is the first year that candidates will only take 4 subjects instead of 6 subjects as in previous years. Accordingly, in addition to the 2 compulsory subjects of Math and Literature, candidates will choose 2 elective subjects from the following subjects: History, Geography, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Informatics, Foreign Languages, Economics and Law, and Technology.

Reducing the number of subjects has helped reduce pressure on candidates. However, this has also caused public concern as many subjects are at risk of being “ignored” due to not being chosen.

According to statistics across the province, among more than 40,000 candidates registering for the high school graduation exam, Geography is the subject with the largest number of registered candidates with more than 18,000 students, followed by History with more than 17,000 students and Economic - Legal Education with more than 12,000 students.

In the natural sciences group, the number of candidates registering for subjects such as Chemistry and Physics ranges from 8,000 to 9,000, accounting for just over 20%. In Biology alone, only over 3,000 candidates registered for the exam.

This year, the number of candidates registering for English has also decreased significantly with more than 8,000 students and mainly concentrated in schools in Vinh city, some of which have a tradition of quality. Many schools, especially non-public schools, have no candidates registering for English or only a few students.

Registration for optional graduation exams also partly shows the picture of this year's university admission season.

Specifically, while the trend of universities is mainly to recruit candidates in the A group (Math - Physics - Chemistry), A1 group (Math - Physics - English) and D group (Math - Literature - English) ... the number of students registering for these subjects is very low. Thereby, it shows that the demand for students to enter university is not high.

The rest of the students mostly only take the exam to graduate.

This differentiation of candidates is objectively a positive signal, showing that only students with real ability have the desire to go to university.

The rest tend to choose to go to vocational school, work abroad or have other career orientations to suit their abilities, economic conditions, family circumstances and future labor market needs.