VietNamNet Bridge – Too many zero marks were given to the university entrance exam papers. This means that the examinees even did not have basic knowledge about the subjects.

The HCM City University for Agriculture and Forestry has reported that the school gave 784 zero marks to the students, who attended the entrance exams to the school. The Da Nang Economics University had 260 exam papers receiving zero, while the Hanoi University of Education had 495 zero marks.

Zero is given only to the students, who gave wrong answers to all the questions. In principle, the students attending the university entrance exams never get zero mark because only the students with good knowledge dream of following university education.

Meanwhile, Trinh Tuan Anh, Deputy Head of the Training Division of the Hanoi University of Education, said that zero marks appear in every year in every university entrance exams.

Especially, Huynh Thanh Hung, Deputy President of the HCM City University for Agriculture and Forestry, still keeps optimistic that 784 zero marks out of the 44,700 exam papers are not a worryingly high figure.

Hung said that university education is the dream of all students. Therefore, even incapable students also try to attend the university entrance exams. In many cases, students attended the exams just to practice for their other exams to their main targeted schools.

According to Nguyen Huu Du, Deputy President of the Hanoi University for Natural Sciences, most of the zero marks were given to the essay-based exams. Meanwhile, students would receive at least 25 percent of the total marks from multiple choice exams, even if they just chose answers accidentally.

Also according to Du, zero mark is quite regularly seen in mathematics exam. A lot of examinees attended the exams with empty heads, just to satisfy their parents.

“Zero mark appears even at the competitions for excellent students, let alone the university entrance exams,” Du said.

He went on to say that he witnessed a lot of examinees entering the exam rooms and sleeping, who submitted blank exam papers before leaving.

However, he complained that 500 out of 30,000-40,000 students received zero is really a big number, which shows the too bad quality of examinees.

A lecturer of a university said that she found silly mistakes in many literature exam papers. A student wrote that Chi Pheo (a male character in a short story of write Nam Cao) “got into trouble.”

“If I had been allowed to make comments, I would have written: you have changed the gender of Chi Pheo,” she said.

The lecturer said she could not understand why the student made such an odd mistake. This is a famous short story, which is always on the focus of the curriculum for high schools.

Meanwhile, other lecturers complained that many students did not understand the requests of the questions. Many of them made a lot of spelling mistakes, while many others did not have any knowledge about the place names in Vietnam.

Especially, history lecturers said a lot of students do not have basic knowledge about Vietnamese history. A lecturer said that only 3 students got 6-9 marks in every 30 exam papers, while 10 students got 4-5 marks, while the others got less than 5.

A mathematics lecturer related that he once gave 2 marks on average to a box of 30 exam papers because of the too bad knowledge of the students.

The existence of the zero marks at the university entrance exams has once again made the education become the aiming point of the public’s criticism. A lot of students reportedly got good marks at their high schools, but still got zero at the university entrance exams.

Source: Tien phong