What do you see through the figure that only 15% of candidates scored 7 or higher in English?

"Surprisingly beautiful" score

The English score distribution of the 2025 high school graduation exam has changed significantly compared to recent years.

Accordingly, the saddle-shaped chart has disappeared, replaced by a nearly bell-shaped chart, slightly skewed to the right.

The saddle-shaped graph of English used to be a headache for theeducation sector. Because the existence of two peaks on the graph shows a large differentiation in teaching and learning foreign languages, reflecting the difference in proficiency between the low-scoring group and the high-scoring group.

Meanwhile, the bell-shaped score spectrum is considered the ideal distribution in education with the peak at the average score - where the majority of students are, and the two sides are symmetrical. The number of students with scores that are too low or too high is very small, and the "gap" between weak and good is eliminated.

As assessed by Professor Nguyen Dinh Duc, the English score distribution for the 2025 high school graduation exam is "surprisingly beautiful".

The bell-shaped score distribution reflects the differentiation of the exam, clearly distinguishing excellent students from average students - an important factor in university admissions. When the situation of "generally excellent scores" no longer exists, universities can more easily classify and select students.

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Specifically, the English score range peaked at 4.5-5.5 points, with the highest being around 4.75-5.0 points with 24,071 candidates.

The number of candidates scoring from 4 to 6.5 points is the majority, creating a clear center. From 6.5 points and above, the number of candidates gradually decreases.

There are 53,251 candidates with scores of 7 points or higher, accounting for 15.1%. In 2024, this figure will be 25.2%.

The average score this year also decreased, from 5.51 in 2024 to 5.38.

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The exam was difficult for most candidates.

Although the two weak-excellent differentiation peaks no longer exist, the average score is below the good level, showing that English is still a difficult subject for the majority of candidates, even when English has become an elective subject, meaning that only candidates with strengths in this subject choose to take the exam.

An admissions expert stated: "A good score range should usually have about 20-30% of candidates achieving 7 points or higher to encourage good and excellent students, while maintaining the necessary differentiation and not making the majority feel "helpless" when they study English well but only get 6-7 points.

In the long term, if there are too few high scores in this subject, society may lose faith in the effectiveness of foreign language teaching in high schools."

The expert also analyzed that the high school graduation exam has two main goals: graduation and university admission.

With the current score distribution, the 2025 English exam does not serve both of these goals well, according to experts.

"With the goal of graduation, nearly 40% of students not achieving the average score is too high, not suitable for the requirements of ensuring basic output. If not adjusted, the risk of students "failing to graduate" because of elective subjects is real.

For admission purposes, the lack of high scores makes it difficult for schools to use them to screen candidates. They will be forced to use additional criteria or combine multiple years of school records - factors that are often questioned for their fairness," the expert said.

Previously, many opinions from teachers directly teaching the 2018 general education program in English said that the test was "beyond standard".

Master of Education majoring in English Dinh Thu Hong used the website https://textinspector.com to evaluate and conclude: the difficulty index of the reading passage in the illustration test is equivalent to university level, and the difficulty index of the reading passage in the official test is equivalent to postgraduate level.

Other indicators also show that the most difficult reading passage of the sample test is still much easier than the official test, and it seems that both reading passages exceed level 3 as set by the Ministry of Education and Training in the innovation program goals for high school level.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/giao-duc/thay-gi-qua-con-so-chi-15-thi-sinh-dat-diem-7-tro-len-mon-tieng-anh-20250716004423289.htm