VietNamNet Bridge - Fifty-thousand secondary school graduates in Hanoi and HCMC will not have be able to enroll in state-owned high schools this year, creating intense competition among students for seats at state-owned schools. 

Tran Thi Bich Ngoc in Dong Da district in Hanoi is worried that her daughter has not prepared well for the high school exam. 

“The high school entrance exam is even tougher than the exam to university,” she said. “If your son fails to apply for a university, he will be able to apply to other schools. If he cannot enter high school, he will have to stay at home and eat the bread of idleness. No employer will recruit workers with secondary education diploma."

Ngoc said she plans to enroll her daughter in Quang Trung or Trung Van High School. “Though my daughter prefers Kim Lien High School, we won’t enroll in the school, because the competition for Kim Lien is very tough,” she said.

Fifty-thousand secondary school graduates in Hanoi and HCMC will not have be able to enroll in state-owned high schools this year, creating intense competition among students for seats at state-owned schools.

However, Ngoc still is not sure if her daughter can successfully enroll in Trung Van. Though Trung Van is less prestigious than Kim Lien, the number of students applying for the school is always high. In the 2016-2017 academic year, 1,180 students applied for the school, while only 400 were accepted.

The daughter of Tran Hong Van  in Binh Thanh district, HCMC decided that she will enroll in Gia Dinh High School three years ago, when she entered secondary school. However, she is not sure if she can pass the exam, though she now does well in school.

“All the students applying for Gia Dinh are good students,” Van said.

She said that the entrance exam will take place in early June, and students do not have much time to prepare for the exam. The academic year will end in late May and the high school entrance exam will take place 10 days later.

Van has heard that the competition for high schools this year will be worse than in previous years, because the number of secondary school students is 13,000 more than last year.

“Our final goal is having university education. In order to be able to enter university, my daughter needs to successfully enroll in high school first. If not, the path of study will end,” she said.

If the fail to enroll in state-owned schools, students will still be able to enter non-state schools. However, non-state schools are less favored in Vietnam.

According to Nguyen Tien Dat, director of the HCMC Education Department, 81,000 students have registered to sit the high school entrance exam.

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