VietNamNet Bridge – The pressure put on the students who are going to finish secondary school and prepare for the high school entrance exams has become harder than ever.

Entering high school is considered the “watershed” in the students’ lives, because they need to have the high school diploma at least to find jobs or continue the education at higher levels.

Obtaining a seat at state owned high schools is the dream of every student, while studying at the high schools for the gifted is the wish of all good students.

A working day of a 9th grader

Mai Lan, a 9th grader of LTT Secondary School in Nam Dinh School, has a good learning capacity as commented by her teacher. Therefore, Lan has decided that she not only needs to pass the exam to a state owned high school, but to a famous high school for the gifted – either Le Hong Phong or Tran Hung Dao.

In fact, Lan has been preparing for the secondary school final exam for the last three years, since the day she entered the secondary school. She gets up early every morning and goes to bed late at night, spends all of her time on learning just to obtain a seat at one of the prestigious schools.

It was Saturday. Lan got up at 5 am. Though it was weekend, Lan looked tired because Saturday was always the hardest working day for Lan.

She had literature, math, English and chemistry lessons at the school. These were all heavy learning subjects for her, because she has to do a lot of exercises.

Math and literature are the two compulsory exam subjects. Therefore, the school’s management board decided to have more math and literature lessons every week to practice students more carefully to prepare for the high school entrance exams.

“We have one math lesson every two days, and we have 20-30 exercises after every lesson,” Lan complained.

The curricular school hours finished at 11 am. Lan had more than 2 hours to have a rest before she began the afternoon learning shift. From 2 pm to 4 pm, she had an extra literature lesson, from 4.30 pm to 6.30 pm extra English lesson and from 7pm to 9.00 pm math lesson.

She had 30 minutes of break between different learning shifts which she spent on moving from one class to another and “energized” herself with a carton of milk and small cake prepared by her mother.

After spending 11 hours on lessons, Lan returned home late. After the dinner, Lan still had to do the home exercises and went to bed at midnight. Lan said that there would be more home exercises in the next days, when the exams come nearer.

When asked about the plan for Sunday, Lan simply said that this would be another working day for her. “Two learning shifts in the morning, and 3 in the afternoon,” she said.

Passing the exam is a must

Other 9th graders, like Lan, also have very busty learning schedules every day. “My parents say I have to pass the entrance exams to high school, or I will be jobless forever,” a friend of Lan said.

“The time for sleeping is my happiest time in the day. However, I have only 4-5 hours to sleep every day,” he complained.

Tien Phong