VietNamNet Bridge - After the exam cheating scams in four provinces were discovered, MOET’s (Ministry of Education and Training) leaders admitted that the questions on the high school final exam were difficult for students.

As anticipated, the admission scores set by universities for the 2018-2019 academic year are 4-6 lower than last year’s because of the poor exam results.

The exam questions raised at the 2017 national high school finals were described as ‘very easy’. They were so easy that some students who got 30 for three exam subjects failed to apply for schools they wanted and had to choose other schools.

The exam questions raised at the 2017 national high school finals were described as ‘very easy’. They were so easy that some students who got 30 for three exam subjects failed to apply for schools they wanted and had to choose other schools.

The exam questions at the 2018 finals were described as ‘very difficult’. They were so difficult that even teachers could not solve all the questions within the given time and many students burst into tears when they left exam rooms.

Tran Manh Tung, a math teacher at the Luong The Vinh High School in Hanoi, admitted that he could get 9 only with this year’s math questions. Some other teachers said they could get 7-8 only.

“Some of the questions were extremely difficult and it took students a lot of time for calculation,” Tung said.

As for history questions, a teacher at a high school for the gifted in Hanoi also admitted he could not solve all the 40 questions within 50 minutes and some questions were ‘beyond students’ capability’.

Le Duc Vinh, former math lecturer at Hanoi Agriculture University, commented that there is still one difficult question that MOET cannot solve, the exam questions. Both easy and difficult questions won’t facilitate universities’ enrollment. 

Vinh agreed that there were some ‘extremely difficult’ questions at the 2018 exam which required many steps of calculation before finding the solutions.

He believes that the questions for high school finals need to be at average level. There should also be some ‘moderately difficult questions’. 

Meanwhile, universities should organize school entrance exams to find suitable students, rather than rely on the high school finals.

Tran Trung Hieu from the Phan Boi Chau High School for the Gifted commented that MOET doesn’t have a long-term strategy, which explained why it had easy questions last year and difficult questions this year.

“Such difficult questions are not suitable for the multiple-choice form,” Vinh said. “The questions would be reasonable if they could be solved by teachers with average capability within 70 minutes.”

MOET, after admitting problems in raising questions, has promised it will ‘correct the fault’ next time. But it is still unclear how it will do so. 

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