VietNamNet Bridge – Ninety-nine percent of students passed the high school final exam, which has pleased the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) but raised concern among National Assembly deputies.

In Hanoi, all students at 92 high schools passed the exam.

Ten years ago, Luong The Vinh was the only high school in Hanoi that had 100 percent of students passing the finals. (i took out this sentence because it wasn’t clear and didn’t make sense).

Hanoi has taken a big leap in improving its education and training quality: the number of schools: the number of schools with 100 percent passage rate has jumped by 90 times just over the last decade ,and three times in over a year.

Other provinces have also reported high percentages of students who have passed the finals. Lai Chau, a poor province in the north, which only had 2,500 examinees, reported that 99.72 percent of students passed exams.

Other provinces of Nghe An, Vinh Phuc and Lai Chau have also reported high achievements, with more than 99 percent of students passing the exams.

The Hoa Binh provincial education department had 98.27 percent of students passing the finals, which was lower than other localities. Nam Luong Son High School reportedly had the lowest percentage of students passing the exams, at 76 percent.

The headmaster of the school attributed the unsatisfactory result to the presence of a camera on the site which “made embarrassed examinees”.

Commenting about the achievements, Van Nhu Cuong, a well-known educator wrote on Facebook: “The numbers are as perfect as in a dream. Why is MOET preoccupied with its plan to reform national education, when everything is perfect?”.

Deputy Chair of the National Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education, the Youth and Children, Trinh Ngoc Thach, said that the high percentage of students passing the exams had raised concerns.

In an interview given to VnExpress, an online newspaper, Thach noted that the new exam mechanisms applied by MOET in the final exams were aimed to appease the public, which had been criticizing the ministry for the “problematic national education system”.

Is it necessary for MOET to continue organizing national final exams every year, if student know in advance that they all will pass the exams?

The percentage of students passing finals dropped to its low of 67.5 percent in 2006-2007, when Nguyen Thien Nhan took office as Minister of Education and Training and initiated the movement to “say no to exam cheating”.

However, everything has returned to the “previous rail”: most examinees pass exams, while 100 percent of students move up to the next grade when the academic year finishes, even if they have do not have sufficient learning capability to continue at a higher level.

Chi Mai