Should consider 'popularizing' multiple-choice testing

On the afternoon of October 22, the Committee on Culture and Education held its 6th plenary session to give opinions on the report on the work in 2023 and the plan for 2024 of the committee. During the meeting, Mr. Nguyen Dac Vinh, Chairman of the Committee on Culture and Education, shared some of his views on some issues when implementing the new general education program, especially the high school graduation exam and the use of the results of this exam for university admission. In his speech, Mr. Vinh expressed his concern about the "popularization" of multiple-choice testing.

Don't make sudden changes.

Mr. Vinh said that the implementation of the 2018 general education program is on schedule. Now the only concern is the organization of the exam in 2025, when the 2018 general education program has been fully implemented. How to design the exam is a difficult task. "It is difficult but it must be done. Knowing that it is difficult, we must study it carefully and discuss it thoroughly to do it well. There are things that need to be considered, but the transition process should also be step by step, with a roadmap. Anything related to a large system of many families and students, do not do anything too suddenly. But the direction of innovation towards better quality must be considered," Mr. Vinh expressed.

According to Mr. Vinh, it is reasonable to evaluate transcripts for university admission at some point. Transcripts are to record the learning results of students at a specific school. However, if transcripts are compared to the national average, if not careful, over time, it will affect the evaluation in high schools. When transcripts are used as a basis for comparison when considering university admission, high schools will pay attention to the scores in transcripts, and if not careful, education will go in a different direction.

Therefore, according to Mr. Vinh, there should still be an exam at the end of each stage of study (not necessarily at each level, for example, after primary school it may not be necessary). For example, now, after junior high school, localities still organize entrance exams for grade 10. After grade 12, exams can also be organized, but do not do it in a heavy-handed way. "The general idea is to set up knowledge tests for students at different schools to have conditions to recognize and evaluate by quality, so that places can look at it and make relatively accurate judgments about the quality level," Mr. Vinh expressed his opinion.

According to Mr. Nguyen Dac Vinh, it is necessary to continue discussing whether the multiple-choice test format is suitable in which situations and to what extent.

Organizing a dual-purpose exam is to set very difficult problems.

According to Mr. Vinh, another issue related to the exam when students finish grade 12 is the need to discuss to unify the concept of the exam's goal. If the goal is the high school graduation exam, which is to test the general knowledge of the learner, then we will design the exam with an appropriate breadth (coverage) of knowledge.

Mr. Vinh analyzed: "Now we see that we have set ourselves a very difficult problem, which is to combine the goal of using the results as a basis for university admission. So the exam has an additional task of having enough differentiation to classify, both testing knowledge with wide coverage and classifying. It sounds simple but in fact this is a rather complicated requirement. If we want to increase the classification, we must increase the difficulty, the exam has in-depth questions.

Because the exam is aimed at serving admission, there must be questions serving narrow expertise, which will affect the assessment of broad knowledge to serve the high school graduation exam. If the exam is only for the graduation exam, it is clearly difficult to classify for university admission. We know it is very difficult, the Ministry of Education and Training also focuses on doing well this exam."

Another issue was also raised by Mr. Vinh, but he emphasized that it was from his personal perspective as a National Assembly delegate, not representing the Committee on Culture and Education or the Standing Committee, which is the popularization of multiple-choice testing for all subjects. Mr. Vinh expressed his hope that National Assembly delegates as well as the Ministry of Education and Training would continue to think about the issue of whether or not to "popularize multiple-choice testing". It is necessary to continue discussing whether multiple-choice testing is appropriate in which situations and to what extent. Especially when testing and examination in major exams greatly affects the learning and teaching process of the entire system.

"There are issues to consider together. Of course, to come to a decision, we need to be careful and thorough. We also respect the Ministry of Education and Training and the Government as the ones responsible for deciding that. As a National Assembly delegate, I raise the issue for you to think more about," said Mr. Vinh.

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