MOET is drafting the 2020 enrollment regulations with six chapters and 29 articles.

Under the draft regulation, the schools that organize separate exams to select students and do not rely on national high-school finals results will have to have an independent unit in charge of organizing exams.

The leaders of the unit must have management capability, responsibility and honesty. At least one of the leaders must have experience in organizing important large-scale exams, or have a bachelor’s degree or higher-level degree majoring in measurement and education evaluation, or have a bachelor's degree or higher-level degree in education management. They must have experience in examination and training management.

MOET Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc affirmed that schools can enjoy autonomy in enrollment, but the autonomy must be associated with the responsibility of explaining and upgrading quality. All the exams must meet requirements in quality and fairness for all examinees.

Regarding the staff in charge of organizing exam activities, schools must allocate enough officers to build exam structure, exam questions and standardized exam question banks.

The schools must have enough permanent workers capable of assessing the characteristics of questions (difficulty, validity and differentiation) and creating exam questions in accordance with fixed format.

The strict requirements have faced strong opposition from schools. A lecturer at a state-owned university in Hanoi said in order to build standardized exam question banks and have enough examiners for the high school finals in recent years, even MOET had to use officers from many universities and high schools. The requirements are too demanding for schools.

He went on to say that once MOET gives self-determination to schools, it needs to let schools enroll students the way they want.

“It’d be better to let schools determine the enrollment mechanisms on their own. The only important thing is the quality of students,” he said.

“The setting of regulations is contrary to the self-determination principle,” he commented.

The training division head of a university in Hanoi said it is unreasonable to require schools to set up such cumbersome personnel apparatus. When organizing exams, schools must have the right to invite experts and teachers from other universities and high schools to design exam questions and mark exam papers.

In reply, MOET Deputy Minister Nguyen Van Phuc affirmed that schools can enjoy autonomy in enrollment, but the autonomy must be associated with the responsibility of explaining and upgrading quality. All the exams must meet requirements in quality and fairness for all examinees.

The training establishments that cannot satisfy the requirements can enroll students by joining forces with other schools or use the same exam results with schools that provide the same training majors.

However, Phuc promised to ease the regulations to make them fit training establishments’ capability.

Le Ha 

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