"The nature of the incident in Son La is more serious and complicated than Ha Giang"

Mr. Mai Van Trinh - Director of the Department of Quality Management, Ministry of Education and Training answered the press about the initial screening results in Son La province at noon on July 23. Photo: Doan Bong

In response to reporters' questions after the announcement of the review results, Mr. Mai Van Trinh said that the investigation agency initially determined that there were signs of violations of exam regulations, especially in the marking stage, specifically signs of correcting multiple-choice exam papers of some candidates.

However, professional measures show that the multiple-choice test has been deleted and the multiple-choice test image to export data sent to the Ministry of Education and Training for grading is completely identical. Therefore, the nature of the incident is very serious and complicated.

“Currently, it is not yet determined how many papers have been edited because the scanned image files saved for grading are consistent with the multiple-choice answer sheets. That is why we have not re-graded the multiple-choice test papers. The level of the violation is very serious. Currently, I do not have enough information to explain further. We do not have enough time to count how many multiple-choice test papers have been edited because the number of papers is very large. Any paper with signs of suspicious irregularities can be detected by professional measures. That is also a great effort. Currently, the Ministry of Public Security and functional units are making efforts to investigate and clarify.”

Mr. Trinh said that the working time in Son La was longer than in Ha Giang and the verification and clarification process has not yet been completed. This shows the complexity of the matter.

Currently, the working group of the Ministry of Education and Training and the investigation agency have just re-evaluated 110 Literature exams - which were high-scoring exams. Thereby, 12 exams were found to have scores lower than the first grading by 1 point or more, including 1 exam with a score 4.5 points lower than the first grading.

Based on the regulations, the assessment council decided to use the assessment results of 110 Literature exams to replace the assessment results of these exams announced by the Examination Council of the Department of Education and Training of Son La on July 11. The assessment results of these 110 exams will be used to consider recognition of high school graduation and admission to universities, colleges, and intermediate schools in 2018 according to the regulations.

In the coming days, the Ministry of Public Security will continue to investigate violations in multiple-choice tests.