A candidate's score increased from 1.1 to 8.75 points after reviewing his high school graduation exam.

Responding to the press this morning, August 13, a representative of the Lao Cai Department of Education and Training confirmed that there was a case where a candidate's score was increased from 1.1 points to 8.75 points after the high school graduation exam was re-examined.

The reason is that this candidate filled in the wrong exam code, causing the machine to grade the answer according to a different exam code.

Specifically, candidate NVS, a chemistry student at Lao Cai High School for the Gifted (Lao Cai province), has astigmatism.

PHOTO: TUAN MINH

After finishing the exam, NVS compared the answers and was confident about his test results. However, after knowing that his biology test score was only 1.1 points, not matching the previously compared results, S. immediately filed a request for a review.

A representative of the Lao Cai Department of Education and Training said that according to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training, this year, the elective subjects in the form of multiple choice tests have 48 test codes and will be tested in 2 sessions in one exam session. Session 1 has test codes 01-24, session 2 has test codes 25-48.

Candidate S. took exam 2, registration number 0403 but mistakenly filled in the exam code 0430 so the machine graded according to the result of exam code 0430.

"After we determined his seat and compared the exam paper, it showed that S. matched the registration number 0403," said a representative of the Lao Cai Department of Education and Training.

According to this person, when the candidates submitted their papers, the supervisor was not allowed to hold the test paper so he only compared the number of test papers and other procedures, then collected the papers as usual so he did not detect any irregularities, and did not have the test paper to check whether the candidates filled in the correct test code or not.

According to a representative of the Lao Cai Department of Education and Training, upon receiving the candidate's appeal request and knowing that the error was due to the candidate filling in the wrong exam code, the department reported the incident to the Department of Quality Management (Ministry of Education and Training), asking for instructions on how to handle this unusual case.

After receiving the direction from the Ministry of Education and Training to resolve the issue in a way that ensures maximum benefits for candidates, the Lao Cai Department of Education and Training has drawn up a record of the unusual exam marking with confirmation from relevant members of the review council such as the police, provincial inspectors, etc., to re-mark.

Lao Cai province has 350 exam papers requested for review (11 papers from the 2006 General Education Program and 339 papers from the 2018 General Education Program).

After the review, only S. and one other candidate had their scores changed. The remaining 348 exams kept their scores.

It is known that S. is a chemistry major, so her high school graduation exam scores for other subjects are quite high: math 7.75, literature 7.25, chemistry 8.5. Candidate S. registered for admission to Hanoi Medical University with her graduation exam results and is waiting for the school's admission score.

Regarding this case, the representative of the National Steering Committee for the 2025 High School Graduation Exam said that there were cases of wrongly filling in or blurring the exam code as above and every year the Ministry of Education and Training pays close attention when doing multiple-choice tests but there are still cases of mistakes.

“For example, there are students who fill in the exam code 1234 but when filling in the wrong code 4321 or fill in the code unclearly. Therefore, the Ministry of Education and Training's viewpoint is that regardless of whether there are subjective or objective errors when filling in the exam code, the solution must first and foremost be based on the interests of the candidates, as long as there are no signs of cheating,” he shared.