Controversy over abolishing the national high school exam

Eliminate the national high school exam; should not eliminate the graduation exam; should organize graduation exams; should organize university entrance exams... those are the conflicting opinions of many education experts suggesting to innovate the exam next year.

At the press conference to conclude the 2016 national high school exam, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Bui Van Ga said that organizing exam clusters in all provinces/cities across the country can be seen as an important test to continue innovating the exam/admission process to be easier and more effective in the coming years.

The Ministry will soon organize workshops to gather public opinions to decide on the method of organizing the exam in the following years. The Ministry will take note of all social and press information and propose a plan as soon as possible.

Bringing graduation exams to localities

Associate Professor, Dr. Le Trong Thang, University of Mining and Geology, said that any proposed exam plan has its pros and cons, so we have to choose the appropriate plan.

"My point of view is not to abolish the high school graduation exam but to assign the annual graduation exam organization to the localities themselves, because this is a normal assessment of the high school learning process of students. Organizing it like this will be suitable for the learning level as well as the teaching and learning conditions in the locality. The Ministry of Education and Training sets out minimum quality requirements. Organizing it like this also motivates localities to constantly improve the quality of teaching and learning in their locality" - Mr. Thang said.

Regarding the 2017 exam, according to Mr. Thang, there should not be too many changes because in education, changes should be limited in a short time, and any deficiencies should be corrected. If changes are made too quickly like now, it will cause bad psychology for students, very tiring, and public opinion believes that the education sector is constantly putting students to the test.

Regarding whether the graduation exam should be used for graduation or graduation, Mr. Thang said that the way of taking the exam is to adjust the way of learning and teaching. Learning is to take exams, not to give up learning. The way of taking the exam must be true to its nature, to evaluate the student properly, not to pass 98, 99% of the time to graduate.

Sharing the same view, Associate Professor Dr. Phan Quang The, Principal of Thai Nguyen University of Technology, said: “If you study, you must take exams, no exam at any level from primary to university. The exam is not important, but the root of studying is taking exams. Here, we should not say that candidates have a hard time, we should not talk about pressure, when we talk about education, we talk about training, when we talk about education, we must talk about pressure and challenges. If we cannot bring education back to the issue of “as leisurely as going out”, then what is there to talk about education?”

University entrance exams should be organized.

Associate Professor Dr. Le Huu Lap - Academy of Posts and Telecommunications Technology said that the national high school graduation exam should be abolished. The high school graduation exam should be organized by the Departments of Education and Training and the exam questions should be taken from the Ministry of Education and Training. As for exams to select high-quality training talents, universities should organize them.

“The goals of the competitions are different. The university entrance exam is to select excellent students, while the graduation exam is to reach a certain threshold to graduate like a light final exam,” said Mr. Lap.

According to Mr. Lap, we should organize a university entrance exam because the current exam cannot select talented people. The exam has 60% knowledge for graduation and 40% knowledge for university entrance, which will not be accurate, making it very difficult to choose. Such a classification is not good because a difference of 0.25 points in social subjects can lead to passing or failing. Meanwhile, the university entrance exam is very fair, only excellent candidates can get in. High school students have been evaluated and classified strictly every year, and they still move up the grade in order.

Regarding university entrance exams, Mr. Lap believes that an independent testing center should be established. This center will help universities organize exams for candidates. Any school that likes it will get the results from the center, and those that don't like it will consider the transcripts.

“The Ministry of Education and Training is a state management agency and should not get bogged down in organizing exams. The Ministry must set out policies and guidelines, inspect and supervise to ensure educational development and social justice in the field of education,” said Mr. Lap.

Previously, in response to the press, Professor Hoang Tuy commented that the national high school exam has truly been renewed. Thanks to the correct concept of examinations, the exam was organized in a concise and economical manner, minimizing risks for candidates and creating conditions to promote teaching and learning in a healthy, progressive and positive direction.

Regarding learning and testing, Professor Hoang Tuy believes that testing is to test the quality of learning, and graduation exams are to test the quality of training one last time before graduation. It is similar to testing a factory's products before they leave the factory.

Regarding the use of the national high school exam results for university and college admissions, according to Professor Hoang Tuy, for universities, the old exam format with several common 3-round exams may be easier to use for admissions, but for candidates and society, it is stressful and unnecessarily costly. Now, all are combined in a single exam, of course, the way to use it for university and college admissions must be more complicated, but candidates and society are less stressed and save a lot of effort and money. So the price to pay to relieve candidates and society of such a burden is not too much.

However, Professor Hoang Tuy said that the complicated problem is that the graduation exam and the university entrance exam have very different requirements, and cannot be easily combined into a single exam. If not done well or correctly, it will be more disastrous than leaving the two exams as they are.

The Ministry of Education and Training needs to listen to public opinion on the limitations and shortcomings of the innovative exam to learn from experience and have an even better exam next year./.

According to Dantri