It is difficult to assess students' abilities.

The Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges believes that designing an exam where all elective subjects are tested within 50 minutes will make it difficult to accurately assess students' abilities, especially with 40% of the questions being true or false, which further increases the likelihood of candidates guessing.

The Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges has recently sent a document to the Minister of Education and Training proposing solutions to ensure consistency between the content of the 2018 General Education Program, its implementation, and the organization of the high school graduation exam and university entrance examinations from 2025 onwards.

In the document, the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges put forward several suggestions for amendments related to the organization of the high school graduation exam from 2025 onwards.

Candidates at the 2023 High School Graduation Examination.

The method of organizing the 2025 high school graduation exam under the new program includes 4 subjects. Of these, Mathematics and Literature are compulsory, and students choose 2 subjects from the following: Foreign Language, History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Informatics, Technology, Economics and Law Education.

Regarding the organization of the high school graduation exam from 2025, the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges, in its document, outlines several advantages, but also points out some limitations and shortcomings.

In this new system, the number of subjects and the fact that students know the subjects in advance are exactly the same as the high school graduation exam more than 40 years ago. However, the 2025 exam with 4 subjects has a new special feature: 36 ways to choose subjects, instead of 4 combinations as before.

The association argues that organizing the exams for each subject independently would prolong the exam period, increase the risk of exam leaks, and create difficulties for high schools in organizing the graduation exam.

Furthermore, designing an exam format where all elective subjects are tested within 50 minutes makes it difficult to accurately assess students' abilities. The inclusion of 40% true/false questions further increases the likelihood of students guessing, leading to poor validity and discriminatory power in the exam.

According to the sample exam for the 2025 high school graduation exam published by the Ministry of Education and Training, the Association assesses that there is a significant inadequacy with the content of the elective subject specializations, where exam questions are the same for both groups of students who have studied the specialized subjects and those who have not, creating unfairness between these two groups of students.

Given the aforementioned limitations and shortcomings, the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges proposes that the State establish or authorize the establishment of a number of independent testing centers operating on a non-profit basis to provide public services in the field of educational measurement and evaluation.

Regarding the 2025 high school graduation exam, the Association believes that different types of exam questions should adhere to the 2018 curriculum and the continuing education program at the high school level, and should also cater to students who have and have not taken elective courses, in order to suit the different groups of candidates; ensuring fairness, reliability, honesty, and accurate assessment of students' abilities, serving as a basis for university and vocational education admissions.

In addition, increasing the time allotted for elective subjects and implementing solutions to limit the possibility of "guessing" in true/false questions (which account for up to 40% of the total score for each subject) will help assess all of the students' abilities, ensuring the validity and discriminatory power of the exam, thus facilitating universities in their admissions process based on high school graduation exam results.

The association also recommends that candidates be allowed to choose additional elective subjects (even if they do not study the elective subjects in the school's curriculum) to ensure that learners develop their self-learning abilities to the fullest and have more opportunities for admission to universities when the quality of incoming students is ensured.

Regarding the preparation direction for the following years, the Association recommends that the exam be regulated as a competency assessment exam; primarily computer-based; and that the exam questions be drawn from a question bank provided by independent testing centers assigned by the Ministry of Education and Training.

In addition, localities proactively organize and conduct exams multiple times a year according to the timeframe stipulated by the Ministry of Education and Training.

"While still maintaining the paper-based exam format, the Ministry of Education and Training only organizes the high school graduation exam according to the four traditional subject combinations A, B, C, and D as before," the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges stated.

Source: https://daidoanket.vn/mon-lua-chon-thi-tot-nghiep-thpt-trong-50-phut-kho-danh-gia-nang-luc-hoc-sinh-10295846.html