Many cities and provinces have announced enrollment methods for the 2024 enrollment season. Students with high IELTS results will be admitted to high schools without attending high school entrance exams. Other schools stated that preferences will be given to candidates with high IELTS scores. 

Tuyen Quang, for example, has stated that students won’t have to sit entrance exams to be admitted to public high schools if they show IELTS results with 5.0 scores or higher. As for Boarding School for Ethnic Minorities, candidates need to have 6.0 IELTS to be enrolled in schools without having to sit entrance exams, and they need to have 7.0 IELTS or higher to be admitted to high schools for the gifted.

Meanwhile, Quang Tri and Lao Cai provinces have announced that students with 4.0 IELTS certificates or higher will be exempted from English exams, or will receive bonus marks for entrance exam results. In Binh Duong, students won’t have to sit English exam if they have 5.5 IELTS or higher.

However, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has requested localities to stop giving priority to candidates with IELTS certificates for admission to 10th grade.

MOET on February 23 sent a dispatch to cities and provinces, instructing local education departments to strictly observe the current enrollment regulations. The localities that have announced their new enrollment methods which don’t follow current regulations must amend the enrollment method.

The ministry has warned that it will take inspection tours in 2024 to be sure that the localities strictly pursue regulations.

To Thuy Diem Quyen, an education expert, applauded MOET’s decision. She stressed that English is just a ‘tool for communication’, and must not be used to assess students’ abilities. 

“Human abilities need to be assessed based on thinking ability,” she said. “Using a kind of certificate in English skills to enroll students is really an unreasonable decision."

According to Quyen, in the US and some other countries, foreign students, in addition to the GPA at school, also require a certificate in English skills. But the requirement comes from the fact that students need to have English skills to study at the schools in these countries. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, students study in Vietnamese, so IELTS is not a must.

“The MOET decision will help people avoid waste when having to spend big money to obtain IELTS certificates,” Quyen said.

“As English skills are a requirement, students have to rush to study English, which costs them a lot of time. They should use the time for English to practice more important skills,” she concluded.

A report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) found that by 2025, 50 percent of workers need to be retrained in skills to adapt to changes in the world.

The expert believes that training students in critical thinking and working capacity is the real goal of education. English should be seen as just a tool to reach that goal and must not be considered a priority skill, especially in the digital era, when AI can work as an effective tool that supports people’s work.

“I believe that for high school students, the things that need to be prioritized are projects and activities which make contributions to society’s development,” Quyen said.

Dang Minh Tuan, lecturer at the University of Education, a member school of Hanoi National University, said that IELTS should be seen as a tool to assess the ability to use foreign language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) in the short term. There is no relation between IELTS and the professional capability or students’ abilities.

Tuan warned that the policies on prioritizing enrollment of students with high IELTS scores may lead to a distorted education model. Many parents spend time and money for their children to obtain the certificates, but they don’t pay appropriate attention to developing other foundations.

Tran Thanh Vu, a postgraduate at Durham University, said IELTS aims at assessing the skills of English use in an academic environment. Therefore, using IELTS for admission will distort the purposes for which the exam is designed.

Thuy Nga