Should the locality be given autonomy for the high school graduation exam?

Recently, the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City proposed that the Ministry of Education and Training assign the People’s Committee of this city to take comprehensive responsibility for directing the implementation of all stages of organizing exams, considering the recognition of high school graduation in the locality.

The exam questions are self-developed by the Departments of Education and Training according to the regulations of the exam regulations and ensure the correct structure and format of the exam questions issued by the Ministry of Education and Training.

This is not the first time, the largest city in the country has this proposal, before that in 2016, the idea of ​​self-organizing the high school exam was given, but not approved by the Ministry.

According to the current Education Law, students who complete the high school program and meet the requirements can take the exam, and if they meet the requirements, they will be awarded a diploma. Here, it is not clear whether the exam should be implemented at the national or provincial level, so the Ministry can assign the organization to the localities.

Need to consider, consider carefully

Exchange with Reporter, Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh, former Director of the Department of Professional Education, Ministry of Education and Training stated: “The high school graduation exam is an important exam, it is also the basis for assessing the quality of the education sector.

To be most effective, the Ministry of Education and Training should still be the agency that issues the exam questions to ensure that they meet the common standards across the country. The organization of the exam, the localities can organize and take responsibility for themselves.

Here, Mr. Vinh further explains that, although the curriculum is the same, there are limits to the content of the exam questions. However, it is still necessary to have a comparison between localities, so a common base and ground is needed for convenient evaluation.

“Moreover, it would be expensive for each province/city to organize themselves like that. Maybe the Ministry of Education and Training does not organize the exam, but it is still necessary to have a common measure, “said Vinh.

In fact, to make a quality test set is not easy, it requires techniques, facilities, a test bank, and a team of qualified teachers and experts to build. build.

This makes experts worry that it is difficult for localities to ensure fairness and reliability so that universities can use the results of the high school graduation exam as the basis for university admissions.

Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh emphasized: “If there are inadequacies, it will greatly affect the candidates. This is something that policy makers need to consider and consider carefully.”

The self-organization and exam questions need to be unified, if there are only a few separate places to work, it will create difficulties for the enrollment process later.

Delegate Nguyen Thi Viet Nga, Member of the Committee for Culture, Education, Youth, Adolescents and Children stated: “This is not consistent with current practice, even in the name of the National High School Examination. , the contest is organized uniformly, under the direction of the Ministry of Education and Training and this is also the agency that issues the exam questions.

If the national exam but a local does not participate, it will not match its criteria, objectives and name.

The fact that the locality sets up the question by itself makes the National Assembly deputies worry that it will lead to the situation that candidates in this locality have the desire to apply for admission in other places, thereby creating a lack of similarity in scores, difficulties for candidates. enrollment.

“In the present time, if City. Ho Chi Minh made his own problems when he would limp, causing difficulties for learners and schools. In the coming time, when there are changes in regulations in university admissions, they can be considered later,” said Ms. Nga.

Self-organizing exams will be an inevitable trend

In fact, in recent years, due to the fact that the level of student differentiation in the high school graduation exam is no longer clear, many universities have had their own admissions options and various forms.

Especially, coordinate the organization of capacity assessment exams, in order to select candidates suitable for training orientation.

Up to now, many universities across the country have announced the target of the exam in 2022. 50% of the targets of the schools are now devoted to other methods of admission instead of just focusing on getting points from good exams. high school career.

And there are more than 50 universities registered to use the results of the Hanoi National University Competence Assessment test as one of the university admission methods.

Even this year, the National Economics University only spent 10-15% of the target for the form of admission based on the results of the high school exam. The Hanoi University of Science and Technology is expected to rely on the results of the thinking assessment exam organized by the university to recruit 60-70% of the total target.

And Hanoi Law University has an additional threshold to ensure the quality of input for each combination (the lowest is 18 points).

Faced with this issue, Dr. Nguyen Tung Lam, a member of the Advisory Group of the National Committee for Education and Training Innovation, said that assigning high school graduation assessments to localities is a necessary and long-term direction. Because in fact, the exam is only intended to assess whether a student has achieved the high school level or not.

The job of the Ministry of Education and Training is to set the floor level required for the exam, and to organize the assessment of the educational quality of each place according to the standards. Another problem is highlighted by the expert, who wants to do this effectively. Universities need to be proactive in admissions by organizing their own exams or testing centers that organize exams for universities to use the results.

However, Mr. Lam still expressed concern: “Our management work is not uniform, especially it is necessary to control the quality of general education. If the implementation is completely done by localities, it will easily lead to stagnation.”

The important thing is that the provinces and cities must have standards for setting exam questions, the quality of training and management must ensure consistency, the new results will reflect correctly.

According to Nguyen Hoa Tra