VietNamNet Bridge – Universities say they still cannot make any decisions about 2015 enrolment because they need to wait for a final decision from the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET).

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Bui Van Ga confirmed that his ministry is still discussing solutions for the 2015 enrolment season.

Meanwhile, Trinh Thi Thu Huong, deputy head of the training division of the Hanoi School of Law, said she can foresee that schools will meet difficulties in implementing their enrolment plans.

Huong said it would be very difficult to find sufficient students with the narrow scoring framework.

“It may happen that there will not be enough students for us to enroll if we set the minimum required exam mark at 15, but there would be too many students to select from if we lower the required exam mark by 0.5 to 14.5,” she said.  

Under current regulations, a student can register to attend entrance exams at many different schools. Therefore, educators say, it would be very difficult to find the real numbers of students who want to enroll in the schools. In many cases, students register to study at some schools, but they change their minds and do not turn up to sit at  exams.

Le Huu Lap from the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology (PTIT), expressing his worry about the large number of examinees who “only exist on paper”, said the current mechanism would force schools to organize two or three enrolment campaigns a year to find enough students.

If so, the schools’ enrolment season would only finish in November or December, which would place big difficulties for schools to arrange training programs.

According to Lap, it would be better for schools to finish the major enrolment season in August 2015, while the next spring enrolment season should begin the next January.

He noted that if schools are allowed to enroll students all year round, there would be no worries about the lack of students. Meanwhile, the prestigious schools would be able to enroll enough students with only one enrolment campaign a year, because many  students wish to study there.

Ga told the press that his ministry’s officials are working on an amendment of the enrolment mechanism for 2015. The draft regulation will be opened for public opinion next week before MOET makes final decisions.

While MOET is still busy discussing the best solutions, schools are keeping a “wait-and-see” attitude.

“We need to be informed about the new enrolment mechanism as soon as possible because we need as much more time as possible to prepare for the new circumstances,” a student of Dong Da High School in Hanoi said.

“It is even unclear how many schools we can register to attend the entrance exams to,” she said.

Tien Phong