Maintaining the high school graduation exam, towards organizing exams on computers
The high school graduation exam still needs to be maintained as a national-scale assessment, but it is necessary to continue to standardize exam questions and improve reliability.
Continue to standardize and improve the reliability of the high school graduation exam
The high school graduation exam always receives great attention. According to the Ministry of Education and Training, the exam method was innovated from 2015, especially from 2020 to now, and has promoted many advantages. The exam results are used for graduation consideration, serving university and college admissions and evaluating the quality of general education teaching, as a basis for adjusting educational activities.
The exam creates a uniform national scale, ensuring equal access to universities for candidates from all regions, while reducing the number of exam participations, helping students and parents save time and costs.
According to Minister of Education and Training Hoang Minh Son, the exam is currently organized methodically, lightly, reducing pressure on students and society, when agencies, localities and teachers proactively receive difficult parts to create favorable conditions for candidates.
However, the exam still experienced cheating due to rapid technological development, unable to keep up with prevention nghiệp vụ, unsynchronized detection equipment, and some invigilators lacking experience or intentionally violating regulations.
Looking back at the negative aspects of the recent high school graduation exam, Minister Hoang Minh Son said that this is an urgent issue, requiring the entire sector to be determined to overcome it.
He called on officials and teachers to uphold substance and honesty from teaching, testing to reporting results, gradually pushing back negativity.
We must ensure that the exam results have sufficient reliability, differentiation, and ensure substantiality, as a basis for higher education institutions to consider admission. But more importantly, there must be substantive results to evaluate the quality of teaching and education in the whole sector" - the minister said.
Building exam schedules on computers
The Ministry of Education and Training has just submitted to the Prime Minister for consideration and approval the Project on organizing the high school graduation exam on computers in the period 2026-2036.
Prof. Dr. Huynh Van Chuong - Director of the Department of Quality Management, Ministry of Education and Training, said that according to the proposed model, exam questions are transmitted through the security channel of the Government Cipher Committee to the server at the exam site; candidates do the test in an internal LAN network, not connected to the internet. This model limits the exam depending on the internet connection and limits the risk of direct attacks from the internet environment.
The organization of computerized exams will be implemented according to a roadmap, only applied in localities and exam sites that fully meet the conditions on facilities, technical infrastructure and human resources, not deployed simultaneously when conditions between regions are not guaranteed. Students must be familiarized with the exam format first, and localities must have plans to support students with less computer access conditions" - Mr. Chuong informed.
Dr. Le Viet Khuyen - former Deputy Director of the Higher Education Department, Ministry of Education and Training, said that in fact, organizing computerized exams is not new. Over the past time, many higher education institutions have organized separate exams, even at the general education level, many schools have started piloting and deploying. The process is going smoothly, candidates do not encounter difficulties.
When applied to national exams, Mr. Khuyen said that the decisive factor does not lie in the form of computerized exams but in building a standardized exam question bank. A large-scale exam question bank with a large enough number of questions for random selection will help increase security, limit the risk of exam leakage, fraud and create fairness in evaluation.
To ensure fairness and objectivity for a national level exam, according to Dr. Le Viet Khuyen, a standardized exam question bank cannot be built simply by gathering a group of experts to compile questions. Questions need to be tested on a large scale with students themselves to assess the difficulty, differentiation and appropriate level before putting them into use. When there is a unified standardized exam question bank nationwide, organizing exams in many locations or in many different phases can still ensure equivalent and fair evaluation results.
Referring to the exam cheating cases that have occurred in Ha Giang, Son La, Hoa Binh, Dr. Le Viet Khuyen said that this is a matter of people and organization, not a limitation of the "2-in-1" exam model.
He said that to prevent organized fraud, it is necessary to strengthen social supervision with the participation of forces outside the education sector such as the police and military to ensure security and transparency of the exam.
In addition, it is necessary to emphasize the responsibility of the head in the organization of the exam, because according to him, serious violations are unlikely to occur if there is no leniency or lack of decisiveness from management levels.
Localities support maintaining the high school graduation exam
From the local side, Mr. Nguyen Tan - Director of Hue City Department of Education and Training proposed that the Ministry of Education and Training maintain stability and soon switch to computerized exams to save resources in the coming time.
Agreeing with this view, Mr. Nguyen Van Khoa - Director of Nghe An Department of Education and Training - also proposed to continue to maintain stability and tighten the organization stage in the locality with many solutions. At the same time, Nghe An province hopes that the Ministry of Education and Training will soon direct and support facilities and technical infrastructure to prepare the exam roadmap on computers and periodic assessment on computers for 9th grade students.
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