Many innovations in exams

2024 is the last year to hold the exam for candidates studying the 2006 general education program. From 2025 onwards, the high school graduation exam will closely follow the content and objectives of the 2018 General Education Program.

According to the announced plan, from the 2025 high school graduation exam, each candidate will take 4 subjects including: math, literature and 2 elective subjects from the remaining subjects (foreign language, history, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, economic and legal education, information technology, technology). Literature will be tested in essay form with a time limit of 120 minutes; the test consists of 2 parts: Reading comprehension (4 points) and Writing (6 points). The remaining subjects will be tested in multiple choice form, in which math will have a time limit of 90 minutes, the remaining subjects will have a time limit of 50 minutes.

Questions for multiple-choice tests are divided into 3 parts: part 1 (consists of multiple-choice questions, with 4 options, of which 1 is correct); part 2 (consists of True/False multiple-choice questions. Each question has 4 options, for each option the candidate chooses True or False); part 3 (consists of short-answer multiple-choice questions. The candidate fills in the boxes corresponding to his/her answer).

At the end of 2023, the Ministry of Education and Training announced the sample exam format structure and said that the format structure will be the basis for building a question bank and creating exam questions for the high school graduation exam from 2025.

Subjects with sample questions include: literature, math, foreign languages ​​(English, Russian, French, German, Korean, Japanese, Chinese), chemistry, physics, biology, history, geography, economic and legal education, information technology, technology (industrial technology and agricultural technology).

While the orientation of the 2025 high school graduation exam under the new program is quite clear, students born in 2010 - the first generation to take the 10th grade entrance exam under the new program - cannot avoid anxiety because they do not know how many subjects they will take and what the exam format will be. The only information that students, teachers, and parents know up to this point is that the literature exam will not use texts and excerpts learned in textbooks as materials to overcome the situation where students only memorize lessons, copy content from available documents, or avoid the situation of skewed review, rote learning, and guessing questions.

Requires initiative from the learner

In the 2024-2025 school year, the 2018 General Education Program will be implemented in the third year for students born in 2007 and in the fourth year for students born in 2010. Although the structure and format of the 10th grade exam next year have not been announced, teachers are constantly updated on the situation; at the same time, they are reminded to help students preparing to enter grade 9 understand.

“Since I was in 8th grade, I have heard a lot about our group taking the exam according to the new program. We have been learning new textbooks since 6th grade and for the past 3 years, our teachers have been teaching us with new methods. During the teaching process, our teachers also emphasized that we must study all subjects equally; in addition to the 3 subjects of math, literature, and English, we must focus on natural sciences and history - geography because who knows, there might be a combination exam,” said Nguyen Hoai Anh, born in 2010, residing in Bac Tu Liem district.

Ms. Hoang Xuan Anh, a parent of a student living in Hai Ba Trung district, shared: “My child is very vague about the concept of the new program. I hope that the Ministry and the Department will issue the exam format structure; study and review instructions from the beginning of the school year so that teachers and students can grasp it soon.”

As soon as she was assigned by the school board to be the homeroom teacher for grade 9 for the 2024-2025 school year, Ms. Nguyen Thu Ha, a literature teacher at Cau Giay, sent a message to all parents. According to Ms. Ha, the 2010 class is very uncertain because they do not know which direction the 10th grade exam will take; therefore, this school year, she asked parents to spend time caring for, reminding, and tutoring their children more closely; this will help children focus on their studies and support teachers in the process of teaching knowledge.

In the immediate future, schools will continue to follow the direction of the new program to build a matrix of test questions and evaluate students throughout secondary school knowledge, focusing on the 8th and 9th grade program.

Teachers also hope that students and parents avoid listening to unofficial sources of information, which can lead to excessive anxiety and panic. It is necessary to be proactive, learn the textbooks, build a study and review path, and pay attention to physical exercise to prepare for the upcoming school year and confidently participate in exams.