The high percentage of students passing the high school final exams announced by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has raised the doubts about the necessity of the exams.

Just after several days after local newspapers reported that Vietnamese people are the second happiest nations in the world, MOET has released another good piece of news: 97.63 percent of the examinees passed the final exams, an ideal proportion.

Also according to MOET, the number of students passing the exams in 2012 is 2 percent higher than that in 2011.

The Doi Ngo High School in Bac Giang, which was the hot topic on local newspapers these days because of the discovered exam cheating behaviors, has 78 percent of students passed the exams. Meanwhile, the proportion is very high at 98 percent in the whole province. 

Analysts have commented that if the wrongdoings had not been discovered at the Doi Ngo High School, the number of students passed the finals would have been higher.

However, the big achievements have raised anger from people, who think that the achievements are abnormally high. Only three students failed the exams in every 100 examinees. Some educators have also admitted that the high percentage of students passed the exams does not truly reflect the real capability of students. 

Therefore, many educators have urged MOET to remove the high school final exam, which they believe is just a “formality.” State budget has to spend huge sums of money every year to organize the finals, while the finals are not necessary because they do not truly reflect the capability of students.

“Why does Vietnam still have to organize such an exam, if it is sure that most of the students would pass the exams?” a teacher question. “It would be better to remove the exam to help both the state and students save their money,” he continued. 

Four years ago, Professor Hoang Tuy, a well-known educator, also said that it is a big waste to maintain final exams. While the State has to spend big sums of money to organize the finals, parents and students have to waste time and money to travel 100 kilometers to reach out to the exam rooms.

“Supposed that a student has to pay tens of thousands of dong on the exams, then one million students would waste the huge sum of tens of billions of dong on the unnecessary exam,” Tuy said.

At that time, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Vinh Hien insisted on the necessity of the final exams. He said that the exams are organized not only to examine the capability of students, but also to assess the quality of the general education.

The question about whether to maintain the final exam has once again been raised after MOET released abnormally high achievements. The people who advocate the idea of removing the exam, said that no need to organize such an exam, if the results of the exams can be anticipated.

However, a lot of educators and parents have disagreed with the idea of removing the exam. Vu Quoc Lich, a teacher of the Hanoi-Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, said that it is unreasonable to remove the finals just because the finals cannot truly reflect the real situation of students. 

“If the problems lie in the wrongdoings, it is necessary to take actions to improve the organization work instead of removing the exam,” he said.

Source: VNN