VietNamNet Bridge – The high percentage of the students passing the high school final exams has been described as a “miracle” if compared with the previous years’ results. However, the “miracle” does not surprise any one.

There has been no official statement from the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) about the results of the high school final exams. However, the reports by local education departments show that the percentage of students passing the exams this year is very high.

Analysts have every reason to call the high percentage of students passing the final exams a “miracle”. In Cao Bang, a mountainous province, only 27.78 percent of students passed the exams in the 2006-2007 academic year. Meanwhile, the figure jumped to 93.73 percent in 2010-2011. Especially, the percentage is even higher for the continuing education system with 94.18 percent.

In Ninh Thuan province, only 68.2 percent of students passed the final exams in 2006-2007, while the figure is sky high this year at 91.85 percent.

Chief Secretariat of the Hai Phong City’s Education and Training Department, Do Van Loi said the percentage of students passing the final exams in 2010-2011 is 99.08 percent, far exceeding the figure of 2007 at 76.9 percent.

Kon Tum, the province with difficult conditions, also has the percentage of students passing the exams in no way lower than Hanoi’s, at 97.31 percent (the figure of Hanoi is 97.79 percent), while the figure was just 55.5 percent in 2007. Especially, the locality has eight schools which have 100 percent of students passing the exams.

Many educators say they do not believe in the high results, even though the high results are not a surprise to them at all.

It is not a surprise, because this is foreseeable.

Right after the high school final exams took place, Associate Professor Van Nhu Cuong, a well known educator in Vietnam, predicted that MOET would hold a press conference to state a “successful exam season”.

Later, when local education departments announced the exam results, Cuong said that many examinees still brought documents for cribbing to exam rooms. Therefore, experts have every reason to doubt about if the exam results can truly reflect the quality of examinees.

“A mathematics teacher told me that he discovered two exam papers which had the same mistakes. This allows us to raise doubts about the seriousness of the invigilation,” Cuong said.

Analysts also forecast that with the exam questions much easier than that in previous years, with the number of authorized inspectors at exam councils decreasing sharply, from 9000 in 2009 to 600 in 2011, the number of students passing the exams will be relatively high.

Dr Nguyen Xuan Han from the Hanoi National University said that the quality of secondary education in Vietnam remains equivocal, and that the high percentage of students passing the exams every year reflects the nature of Vietnam’s education.

To date, Vietnam has over 400 universities and junior colleges. These include over 300 local schools which have been upgraded from the schools at lower levels, or have been newly established over the last 10 years.

A lot of students now choose to attend the university exams to the local universities instead of the schools in the two education centers of Hanoi or HCM City.

The Hai Phong University, for example, has received 10,000 registrations to take the exams to the school, while the Vinh Phuc Junior College in Vinh Phuc province has 3000, and the Hong Duc University in Thanh Hoa University has attracted 10,000 examinees from Thanh Hoa and neighbouring provinces.. Meanwhile, the number of students registering to attend the exams to An Giang University accounts for 50 percent of the total students registering to attend the university entrance exams.

C.V