The final decision on grading the 10th-grade math exam is causing debate.

After much debate regarding the conditions in question 5 of the 10th grade exam, the Hanoi Department of Education and Training has agreed on the scoring guidelines for this question.

Hanoi students during the 10th grade entrance exam. Photo: Dinh Ha .

The Hanoi Department of Education and Training has released information regarding the grading of question 5 in the Mathematics exam for the 10th grade entrance exam in the 2026-2027 school year. This was a topic that sparked much debate after the exam questions were published.

According to the agreed-upon grading guidelines, question 5 is the last question of the exam, falls under the application level, and is worth 0.5 points.

The problem presents a scenario where a company needs to complete an order of 1,000 products. The warehouse rental cost is 3 million VND per day, each worker produces 5 products per day and receives a bonus of 1 million VND upon completion of the order. The requirement is to determine the number of workers and the number of days the warehouse is rented to minimize total costs.

The Hanoi Department of Education and Training stated that this is an optimization problem linked to a real-world situation. To solve it correctly, candidates need to understand the requirement to complete an order of 1,000 products and that warehouse rental costs are calculated based on the number of days of use. They must then formulate variables and reason appropriately based on the given information.

The 2026 Grade 10 Math exam in Hanoi. Photo: Ngoc Bich .

According to the official answer key, candidates receive 0.25 points if they complete the following steps: Let the number of workers be x (x belongs to N*), the number of days the warehouse is rented be y (y belongs to N*), set the condition 5xy ≥ 1000, and construct the expression for the total cost S = x + 3y (million VND).

The remaining 0.25 points are allocated to transforming the expression to find the minimum value of S. From the problem conditions, the student deduces S = x + 3y ≥ x + 600/x = [(x - 24)(x - 25)]/x + 49 ≥ 49, thereby determining that the optimal solution is to deploy 25 workers and rent a warehouse for 8 days.

The Hanoi Department of Education and Training announced that 38 heads of the math exam grading committees met and agreed on a grading method. If a student misunderstands the condition as 5xy = 1000 instead of 5xy ≥ 1000 but correctly follows the remaining steps, they will only have 0.25 points deducted.

The agency also stated that any issues arising during the grading process will be reviewed and handled by the grading committee to ensure accurate assessment of candidates' abilities, while also guaranteeing fairness, objectivity, and the rights of students participating in the exam.

In recent days, after the 10th grade math exam was released, the way the conditions were set in the optimization problem in question 5 has sparked much debate. Some opinions suggest that since the question requires completing exactly 1,000 products, the appropriate condition is 5xy = 1000.

Meanwhile, another group of opinions argues that this problem is related to the real-world production context and needs to consider the daily cost of warehouse rental. Since businesses still have to pay for the last working day even if the order is completed before the end of the day, the condition 5xy ≥ 1000 is considered more appropriate to the practical requirements of the problem.

Source: https://znews.vn/chot-cach-cham-bai-toan-thi-lop-10-gay-tranh-luan-post1656861.html