VietNamNet Bridge – Analysts have rung the alarm bell over the fact that many high schools are trying to expel the students with low academic results, because they fear that the bad students may badly affect the school’s reputation.

 

A lot of 12th grade students have to leave their schools after the first semester. Thought This has been seen regularly in the past  many years it still seems to be a surprise to many people. However, not to educators, because they understand that it is because high schools try to weed out the bad students in order to ensure their overall achievements. The problem is that the schools anticipate that the bad students may fail the final exams, and if so, the schools will not be able to rank high by the end of the academic year. Therefore, it is better for them to keep only the best. Only the high schools with high percentages of students passing finals are considered prestigious.

 

Raising students’ marks

 

In a recent article, Dr Ho Thieu Hung, former Director of the HCM City Education and Training, also wrote that for the past many years, many high schools, under the pressure of the “achievement disease” has been trying to weed out the students with low academic results. As the result, only the students, who are believed to be able to pass the finals, can stay.

 

The term “achievement disease” has been used widely by the Ministry of Education and Training and educators to describe the phenomenon that schools, , try to obtain high overall ranking at all costs.

 

In fact, the achievement disease happens not only in HCM City, but in all cities and provinces nationwide. In principle, schools are not allowed to expel students without legitimate reasons, but no one has criticizes the  behaviour.

 

Of course, once a school refuses to receive a student, it would be also difficult for the student to enroll in another school. Therefore, in order to help create best conditions for students to leave, the schools are ready to adjust the marks the students got in the past to “beautify” student’s transcript. With “beautiful” school reports, students will find it easier to find a place at other schools. When applying to other schools, students will never say that they have been asked to leave previous schools, but they simply say they have moved houses

 

Who to blame? the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET)

 

Educators have many times called on schools not to expel bad students, while government agencies have threatened to discipline the schools that violate the current regulations. However, nothing has changed.

 

Experts have pointed out that it is the mechanism set up by MOET that creates the “achievement disease”. Every year, MOET calculates the numbers of students who pass final exams and gives awards to schools based on these figures.

 

Educators believe that in order to eliminate the achievement disease, more reasonable methods to evaluate education achievements are needed. They said it is not reasonable to use the numbers of students passing final exams. In principle, the percentage of high school graduates alone still cannot  reflect the schools’ education quality.

 

In 2009, 51,640 students in HCM City attended the final exam, while the figure was 59,000 in Thanh Hoa province. The census showed that in 2009, HCM City had 7,123,340 people, while Thanh Hoa had 3,400,239 people. If comparing the two localities, one would see that HCM City has 7 12th graders out of 1000 people, while the ratio is 17/1000 in Thanh Hoa. If so, Thanh Hoa must rank above HCM City in general education. However, in accordance with the current method applied by MOET, HCM City, which has high number of students passing high school exams, has always been holding higher positions in the ranking than Thanh Hoa. In 2007, for example, HCM City ranked first, while Thanh Hoa ranked 42nd out of 64 provinces and cities.

 

Source: Nguoi lao dong