The regulations on high school graduation exams recently issued by the Ministry of Education and Training, effective from 2025, stipulate a list of foreign language certificates exempted from the foreign language exam in the recognition of high school graduation. Of these, 12 are English certificates, the rest are certificates in Russian, French, German, Japanese and Chinese.

Certificates exempted from foreign language exam in high school graduation exam in 2025 include:

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Thus, candidates with one of the certificates in the above list or foreign language certificates recognized by the Ministry of Education and Training as equivalent to the 6-level Foreign Language Proficiency Framework for Vietnam (level 3 or higher and valid until the date of exam registration) will be exempted from the foreign language exam in the recognition of high school graduation in 2025.

However, the new point in the 2025 high school graduation exam is that although foreign language certificates will continue to be used to be exempted from the exam in graduation recognition, they will not be converted into 10 points as in the 2024 exam.

Regarding this change, speaking with Thanh Nien reporter, Mr. Huynh Van Chuong, Director of the Department of Quality Management (Ministry of Education and Training), explained: "This method continues to encourage foreign language learning but aims for more fairness in graduation exams. For example, previously, students with an IELTS 4.0 certificate were also converted to a score of 10 like students with an IELTS 8.5 score."

Mr. Chuong also noted that candidates who are eligible to be exempted from the foreign language exam but still want to take this exam must use the exam results to calculate their high school graduation score.

The trend of candidates having foreign language certificates and using them to exempt from exams is increasing. In 2024, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training, the total number of candidates registering for exemption from foreign language exams is 66,927, accounting for 6.25% of the total number of candidates. Of which, Hanoi has the largest number with 21,554 candidates, followed by Ho Chi Minh City with 13,076 candidates.

In previous years, candidates exempted from the foreign language exam would be given a score of 10 for this subject. The exemption from the foreign language exam is only used for high school graduation purposes. Students who want to use the exam results for university admission, even though they are eligible for exemption from this subject, must still register to take the exam.