Preparing for the 2016 exam: Need to fix errors in the old exam plan!

Evaluating the 2015 National High School Exam , many leaders of the Department of Education and Training and university principals highly appreciated that the exam had achieved better quality than previous years' exams, helped save money for society, people and schools, and accurately assessed the candidates' learning ability...

However, in order for the 2016 National High School Exam and University and College Admissions to be more successful, the Ministry of Education and Training needs to overcome some shortcomings and limitations and make further improvements to increase trust in society.

The 2016 exam will continue to be based on competency assessment.

Talking to Dan Tri , Deputy Minister of Education and Training Bui Van Ga said that, implementing the Prime Minister's direction, on the basis of seriously learning from experience, receptive to comments and contributions from experts, teachers and the whole society, the Ministry of Education and Training plans to organize the National High School Exam and University and College Admissions in 2016 in the direction of basically maintaining stability as in 2015 with some appropriate adjustments. Specifically: The 2016 exam is expected to be held in 3 days, June 13, 14, 15. Continue to organize provincial and inter-provincial exam clusters as in 2015 with some adjustments suitable to reality; strengthen coordination and support of universities.

Candidates in areas bordering examination clusters can flexibly choose a convenient examination cluster; special areas with many difficulties will be considered to set up examination sites to facilitate candidates.

Regarding the exam, Deputy Minister Ga said that it will continue to be developed in the direction of assessing the ability, with better differentiation to objectively assess the ability of candidates, meeting the objectives of the exam. At the same time, it will be supplemented and upgraded to perfect the software system based on the principle of increasing the application of IT in the stages of the exam, especially in the stages of registration and selection, ready to meet the requirements for the 2016 National High School Exam and the following years.

Needs a lot of technical work

Prof. Dr. Tran Van Nam, Director of Danang University, said that in order to organize the 2016 National High School Exam more successfully, the Ministry of Education and Training needs to adjust some technical issues to better enroll in universities and colleges, specifically: encourage candidates to register for the exam online; shorten the admission time. In particular, top universities should have higher admission scores to show the stratification in higher education.

Sharing the same opinion, Associate Professor Dr. Do Van Xe, Vice Principal of Can Tho University, suggested: “ In the 2016 National High School Exam , at the university admission registration stage, there needs to be coordination between the Departments of Education and Training to avoid confusion among candidates and parents when registering for admission. Regarding the announcement of the National High School Exam scores, the Ministry of Education and Training should boldly assign the task to universities and departments, thereby sharing the burden with the Ministry. In addition, the Ministry needs to have guidance and create good connections between universities and departments of education and training to make the exam organization more convenient.

Regarding the admission rounds, Mr. Xe said that the first round should be kept and candidates should only apply to one school, to avoid the situation of fake candidates.

Prof. Dr. Dinh Xuan Khoa, Principal of Vinh University, proposed that the admission process in the National High School Exam still has some technical issues, information technology infrastructure, and the coordination between schools needs to be tight, synchronous, and have more careful preparation to gain experience in organizing the 2016 National High School Exam. The registration, admission, and post-admission processes need to be handled in accordance with the law from the beginning so that candidates are more careful in declaring their personal history and admission areas.

Survey of the number of candidates taking the exam

Mr. Pham Van Dai, Deputy Director of the Hanoi Department of Education and Training, suggested: “The Ministry of Education and Training should direct the Departments of Education and Training to conduct surveys on the number of candidates taking the exam for admission to universities and colleges; focus on transferring to the Department of Education and Training where the university hosting the exam cluster is located to collect and transfer initial information so that universities have a basis for planning the organization of the exam.

Mr. Dai said that in choosing the examination sites, due to the lack of direction from the Ministry of Education and Training, universities proactively chose secondary and high schools as examination sites, so in reality there was an overlap between universities and the Department of Education and Training (both choosing the same secondary or high school) as examination sites. Therefore, the Ministry of Education and Training needs to direct the Department of Education and Training to take the lead in allocating areas to select secondary and high schools as examination sites for universities, avoiding overlap when letting universities choose their own examination sites.

Regarding the exam supervision, Mr. Dai said that the Ministry has assigned universities to coordinate with the Department of Education and Training to organize the exam, however, it has not specified how many staff and teachers of the Department of Education and Training will participate in each exam cluster in the work of exam supervision, marking, supervising the exam rooms, checking the exam papers, and the number of leaders of each exam site, so many problems have arisen. It is recommended that the Ministry of Education and Training specify the number of staff and teachers of the Department of Education and Training participating in the work of exam supervision, marking, and exam supervision at universities (as stipulated for universities supervising the Department of Education and Training).

To make the 2016 national high school exam and university and college entrance exam even better, Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Kim Son, Vice President of Hanoi National University, said that the Ministry of Education and Training needs to organize a conference to collect opinions and suggestions to summarize the organization of the national high school exam and university entrance exam before determining the 2016 exam plan. In particular, it is necessary to pay special attention to renewing the exam questions for the integrated exam. The integrated exam has many purposes but the questions are still given according to the old structure, which is unreasonable. The exam questions need to have a higher level of differentiation to be able to serve the exam used for many purposes.

According to Dan Tri