The Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges has just sent a document to the Minister of Education and Training (MOET) proposing solutions to ensure consistency between the content of the 2018 General Education Program, the implementation of the 2018 General Education Program, the organization of high school graduation exams and university admissions from 2025.

In the document, the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges raised many opinions that need to be revised regarding the organization of high school graduation exams from 2025.

The method of organizing the 2025 high school graduation exam according to the new program includes 4 subjects. Of which, 2 subjects of Math and Literature are compulsory and 2 subjects that students choose from the following subjects: Foreign Language, History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Information Technology, Technology, Economic Education and Law.

Regarding the organization of high school graduation exams from 2025, in the document, the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges stated some advantages, but also pointed out some limitations and shortcomings.

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

The association believes that if exams are organized for each subject independently, it will prolong the exam time, increase the risk of leaked questions, and cause difficulties for high schools in organizing graduation exams.

Furthermore, the design of the exam, in which all the optional subjects are tested in 50 minutes, will make it difficult to accurately assess the ability of the learner, and especially the design of 40% of the questions being true or false increases the ability of the candidates to "guess". This leads to the poor value and classification of the exam questions.

According to the reference exam questions for the High School Graduation Exam from 2025 announced by the Ministry of Education and Training, the Association assessed that there was a significant inadequacy with the content of the selected topics of the subjects being given common exam questions for both groups of students who were taught and those who were not taught the topics, creating unfairness between these two groups of students.

Faced with some of the above limitations and shortcomings, the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges recommends that the State establish or permit the establishment of a number of independent Testing Centers operating under a non-profit mechanism to deploy public services in the field of educational measurement and assessment.

Regarding the 2025 high school graduation exam, the Association believes that the creation of different types of exam questions must comply with the 2018 program and the high school continuing education program and the group of students who study elective subjects and those who do not study elective subjects to suit the candidates taking the exam; ensuring fairness, reliability, honesty, and correct assessment of students' abilities, as a basis for university and vocational education admissions.

In addition, increase the time for the optional subject exams and have solutions to limit the ability to "guess" in the form of true or false questions (accounting for up to 40% of the score of each subject) to fully assess the learners' abilities, ensuring the value and classification of the exam so that universities can conveniently select candidates based on high school graduation exam results.

The Association also recommends that candidates choose additional elective subjects (even if they do not study elective subjects in the school's prescribed curriculum) to ensure that learners fully develop their self-study capacity and have more opportunities to be admitted to universities when ensuring input quality.

Regarding the preparation orientation in the following years, the Association recommends that the exam be a competency assessment exam; mainly on computers; the exam questions are drawn from the question bank provided by independent Testing Centers assigned by the Ministry of Education and Training.

In addition, localities proactively organize exams many times a year according to the time frame prescribed by the Ministry of Education and Training.

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