The problems are said to originate from high-ranking secondary schools, especially those for gifted-children only accepting registration from those with excellent performance at primary schools.

Principal of Vinh Tuy Secondary School in Hanoi, Nguyen Van Tam, said that he was shocked when looking at the primary school reports of the newly-accepted pupils at his school, with 80 per cent having only marks nine and 10.

"Maybe the hard race to be accepted to a good secondary school had made pupils and also parents and teachers to try to have the school reports with only excellent marks," he said. "But I think this doesn’t reflect reality or the actual performance of students. We can’t have so many excellent students like that in any school."

Tam also warned parents not to try to send their children to schools for the gifted if their children are just normal.

"This would put a lot of pressure on the children and affect their development," he said.

A parent from the southern province of Vung Tau recently posted the results of a fourth-grade class at a local primary school in which 42 out of 43 pupils had excellent scores.

Teacher Tran Thi Tuyet Mai from Doan Hung Primary School in Phu Tho Province admitted that score-fixing was not rare in her school and she herself had many times fixed scores following the wishes of parents.

"I did that in order to help my pupils have a better chance in their future," the teacher said. "Many of them are children of my friends or colleagues who asked me to help raise their children's scores so that they can apply to good schools."

The teacher said that the problem can only be solved when secondary schools stop considering the primary school reports as a criteria for registration. Dtinews

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