High School Graduation Exam is 'unusually' difficult: Will it ensure fairness for students?

TPO - The exam questions for some subjects in the 2025 High School Graduation Exam, the first year of exam innovation under the 2018 General Education Program, "shocked" many candidates with their "unusual" difficulty.

Challenging exam for specialized school students

The 2025 High School Graduation Exam is the first year that 12th graders will take the exam according to the 2018 General Education Program. At the end of the exam, many candidates burst into tears because the Math and English questions were too difficult.

Especially the English exam, which makes students of specialized schools and excellent students confused. The English exam is in the form of multiple choice, the time for the exam is 50 minutes but the exam paper is long, covering 4 pages with densely written words.

Many candidates said that the questions were printed in small font size, were too long, and used vocabulary and grammar structures at a much more advanced level than what candidates learned in textbooks, making them dizzy from the moment they read the questions.

Especially the English exam, makes students of specialized schools and excellent students confused. (Photo: Nhu Y)

This year's foreign language teachers also assessed that the exam was too difficult, the questions raised the level of individual knowledge to the level of paragraphs and essays, the amount of information was large, the time to do the test was only 50 minutes, many students would not be able to complete it. A teacher from a specialized high school exclaimed: "This year's graduation exam is also a challenge for specialized students". Teachers predicted that the average score for English would only stop at 4-5 points.

The exam has ended but the issue of "difficult exam questions" is still hot on forums, receiving great attention from students and parents.

A parent in Ky Van commune ( Ha Tinh ) whose child is taking the High School Graduation Exam this year shared that before the exam, her child tried hard to study day and night. In the countryside, there are no conditions to study foreign languages ​​like students in the city, but her child still searched for documents and stuck to books to confidently enter the exam. But when the exam was over, her child was distraught because she "couldn't do the foreign language test", guessing that she "only got about 5 points". She said that right after reading the exam questions, she felt "shocked, disappointed", and lost the spirit to do the test.

“Seeing my child lying there, not wanting to eat or drink, makes my heart ache. The Ministry of Education and Training must consider all students to ensure fairness,” said this parent.

The test needs to be standardized.

Professor Nguyen Ngoc Ha, Deputy Director of the Department of Quality Management (Ministry of Education and Training), said that this year's exam is oriented towards assessing students' abilities with a structure and format that has completely changed compared to last year. Students find it difficult because some new features of the exam make them confused. However, before that, the Ministry of Education and Training organized a large-scale trial in all three regions nationwide. The experiment aims to assess students' ability to respond in order to adjust the difficulty of the exam. When the exam council worked, the issue of score distribution was also thoroughly discussed by the exam team.

According to Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh, an education expert, according to the 2018 General Education Program, students completing grade 12 are expected to achieve English level B1 according to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), but the 2025 High School Graduation Exam has a series of questions with difficulty levels exceeding B1, both in vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. The reading passages are academic in nature, with complex sentence structures, requiring in-depth reasoning and analysis, which are not suitable for the ability of grade 12 students according to the program's objectives.

Mr. Vinh raised the issue that the test questions may not have been standardized by actual testing. While the requirement is that the test questions must go through many rounds of testing to assess the difficulty, validity and reliability. The lack of transparency in the question-making process cannot be overlooked for a national exam that affects millions of students each year.

To ensure the stability of the exams, Mr. Vinh said that the Ministry of Education and Training really needs to standardize the national exam development team in terms of both expertise and technique, design standardized exams, accurately reflect output standards and ensure reliability.

“A high school graduation exam for students nationwide needs to be built according to pedagogical, scientific, standardized principles, with learners at the center and aiming for fairness, reliability, and measuring the correct output standards of the general education program,” said Mr. Vinh.

Education experts say that the English exam is difficult, with too many questions and incredibly long and heavy text. If a student has average ability, he or she cannot read and understand this exam.

Putting an exam that is too difficult and too differentiated in the High School Graduation Exam is not suitable for all students in all regions of the country with different learning conditions. To be fair, a good but very difficult exam is only suitable for students who have the conditions to study foreign languages ​​in urban areas, where there are many exam preparation centers, and it is disadvantageous for students in mountainous areas, difficult areas, and places where there are no learning conditions.

Mr. Dinh Duc Hien, Executive Director of FPT Bac Giang Inter-level High School, also assessed that this year's exam was difficult, beyond the ability of the candidates. Many of the data in the questions were not in the textbooks. Students who want to do the exam must have information and data from research and experiments, requiring them to have the ability to read, analyze, link, synthesize and compare, based on basic knowledge to find the answer.

Mr. Hien also said that for a long time, our education has been following the direction of "studying for the test", with difficult exams like this year causing anxiety and insecurity for students in the coming school year. This further promotes the increase of extra studying and exam preparation to do well on the graduation exam.

Education experts say that difficult exam questions and knowledge beyond the scope of textbooks go against the education sector's policy of limiting extra classes and tutoring.

At the press conference to conclude this year's high school graduation exam, leaders of the Ministry of Education and Training affirmed that next year's exam will correct the shortcomings of this year's exam and take into account opinions about "difficult exam questions".

But parents have their own reasons, what has the education system prepared for this year's 12th graders before taking the exam with difficult questions? During their studies, they always got 9, 10 points, were "excellent" students, good at all things, but were "shocked" by the High School Graduation exam questions.

In the 2025 High School Graduation Exam, nearly 1.17 million candidates nationwide registered to take the exam. In addition to the two compulsory subjects of Math and Literature, students can choose two other subjects. Foreign languages ​​​​had 352,652 candidates registered to take the exam, ranking third, after History and Geography.

Last year, English was a compulsory subject. Nationwide, more than 906,000 candidates took the English exam in the 2024 High School Graduation Exam. The exam was assessed to be suitable for students' abilities, but 42.67% of candidates scored below average, 145 failed, and only 565 candidates achieved perfect scores.

Ha Linh

Source: https://tienphong.vn/de-thi-tot-nghiep-thpt-kho-bat-thuong-co-dam-bao-cong-bang-cho-hoc-sinh-post1756129.tpo