The Ministry of Education and Training has just issued a Draft Circular amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Regulations on university and college admissions for Preschool Education.
The new points of the draft are related to adjusting the threshold to ensure input quality for the groups of pedagogical and health majors; early admission quotas are determined by training institutions but do not exceed 20% of the quota for each major; admission scores and passing scores of methods and subject combinations used for admission must be converted to a common scale; admission based on academic records must be based on the results of the entire 12th grade year of the candidate...
The draft is under construction, seeking comments for completion and will be applied from the 2025 enrollment season.
Need to clarify the concept of "early admission"
Speaking to Lao Dong, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Duc, Chairman of the University Council - University of Technology, Vietnam National University, Hanoi - said that the concept of "early admission" needs to be clearly defined in the Regulations to distinguish between admission results based on academic records and admission results based on independent exams, because the admission rates, quotas and methods are different. This helps avoid confusion for candidates, society and universities.
He acknowledged that, in reality, the admission methods to select excellent students from specialized schools, students with international certificates such as SAT, ACT... And such subjects have very good and reliable input quality.
"The fact that schools have their own policies and methods for admission is consistent with the Law on Higher Education and also consistent with international early admission practices. Not to mention, that method can recruit talented students, so the Ministry should support it," said Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Duc.
Besides, he also supports limiting the time and quota for early admission based on academic records. For many years, the results of assessment based on academic records have always been higher than the results of high school graduation exams. The situation of favoritism and leniency in assessment based on academic records still exists.
"Controlling to improve input quality, demonstrating the state management role of the Ministry of Education and Training, is necessary," he acknowledged.
As for the early admission quota set by the training institution but not exceeding 20% of the quota of each training major or group, according to Professor Duc, the scientific basis for proposing this ratio should be reconsidered because according to the Law, schools are autonomous in enrollment.
"The Ministry should not intervene too deeply and set a control rate if those methods can recruit good students with good input quality. The Ministry should only limit easy admission methods that do not properly assess input quality, and at all costs "grab" students" - he frankly said.
Only the floor score should be specified between admission methods.
Regarding the regulation "ensuring that the admission score for early admission (after equivalent conversion) is not lower than the admission score of the general planned admission round", Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Duc acknowledged that it is only suitable for the admission method based on academic records. If it is "equated" with other methods, it has no scientific basis and is not suitable for reality.
In addition, the conversion to a 3-subject graduation exam score scale is forced and baseless because the admission scores of each method depend on the difficulty of the exam and the enrollment quota of each method.
Furthermore, admission methods that combine international certificate exam scores, capacity assessment, thinking assessment, consideration of excellent students, consideration of specialized school students, and graduation exam scores, and consideration of admission priorities, cannot be applied correctly.
"The conversion can only be done fairly when there is similarity or equivalence of the exam matrix. Only the floor score should be specified between the methods; it can be equivalent or proportional to each other by an uncertain coefficient (according to the difficulty and differentiation of candidates' level)" - Professor Duc said.
For example, he gave an example of the Hanoi National University's aptitude test, which is a difficult test. Up to now, no candidate has achieved a perfect score, and the number of candidates who have scored above 130/150 points can be "counted on the fingers". Moreover, in recent years, the high school exam has served the highest goal of graduating from high school. The level of differentiation is completely different and cannot be converted mechanically.
Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Duc also proposed that the Ministry of Education and Training support the organization of registration for all admission rounds for all methods during the admission year to ensure fairness and equality between admission rounds. Avoid prolonging the registration period, which can easily cause "virtual registration", lack of concentration, dispersion for learners and fatigue for schools.
