The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has just issued Circular No. 24/2025/TT-BGDDT amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Regulations on the National Science and Technology Research Competition for junior high and high school students issued with Circular No. 06/2024/TT-BGDDT, dated April 10, 2024 of the Minister of Education and Training.
The supplementation and amendment of Circular 06 focuses on 3 main contents, including: How to select projects to compete in the National Competition; issues related to the organization of the competition and issues related to the organization of the competition at the competition unit level.
Publicly announce projects, with social supervision
Accordingly, the amendment of regulations on organizing competitions at the competition level requires the participating units to select competition projects through the competition organization form, applying issued regulations. This helps projects when selected to participate in the National Competition not be surprised when participating in the Competition. Units are also required to improve the honesty of scientific research by specifying requirements such as announcing and declaring the selected projects to participate at the national level, further clarifying the responsibility of the scientific research supervisor.
Although this has been stipulated before, in the Circular amending and supplementing Circular 06, this content is emphasized and included in specific subjects to improve scientific integrity in scientific and technical research. The projects selected for the competition are selected to participate at the national level when publicly announced, ensuring social supervision and honesty in research.
The Circular also amends and supplements a number of other contents to improve the organization of the Competition, aiming to make the organization more public, transparent and fair to further promote the making of scientific and technical research a regular activity in general schools, promoting teaching and learning according to the orientation of developing STEM science and technology to meet the requirements of preparing human resources for national development in accordance with the orientation of the Party and the State.
Adjusting the way of calculating the number of projects participating in the contest towards fairness
In the Circular amending and supplementing Circular 6, it is stipulated that the method of calculating the number of projects participating in the national competition is based on the ratio of the number of projects participating in the competition at the Department of Education and Training compared to the total number of projects participating in the competition of the Departments of Education and Training nationwide. This regulation aims for a more fair competition.
Accordingly, Departments of Education and Training with good scale and movement of the contest will be assigned a corresponding number of projects to compete in the National Competition, avoiding equalization and not really encouraging the movement. Departments of Education and Training that do not have a profound movement if they want to increase the number of projects participating in national competitions will have to consider encouraging and promoting the movement to be able to have more representatives at the national level.
Circular amending and supplementing Circular 06 stipulates that small-scale participating units are allowed to submit a maximum of 3 national competition projects. Larger-scale units, with a project participation rate at the unit level of greater than 1% and less than or equal to 5%, will be registered with a maximum of 06 projects; with a project participation rate of greater than 5% and less than or equal to 10%, a maximum of 09 projects will be registered; with a project participation rate of greater than 10%, a maximum of 12 projects will be registered.
For participating units that are general schools under ministries and ministerial-level agencies, universities, universities, institutes, and academies, each unit can register a maximum of 3 participating projects, an increase of 1 project compared to the previous regulations in Circular 06.
In order to encourage the movement of localities, the Circular amending and supplementing Circular 06 stipulates that participating units are allowed to submit 1 additional project for each project that won the Fourth Prize or more at the international competition in the previous year.
To ensure stability, Circular 06 amends and supplements Circular 06 conditions transition for the 2025-2026 School Year Competition: the number of participating projects of participating units is the Department of Education and Training after merging provinces and cities, the maximum number of participating projects is the total number of participating projects of participating units before the merger.
