The high school graduation exam has many changes
The 2025 high school graduation exam is the first year that grade 12 students take the exam according to the 2018 General Education Program. Students take 2 compulsory subjects: Math, Literature and 2 elective subjects from the remaining subjects. Except for the Literature exam in the form of an essay, the remaining subjects are tested in multiple-choice format. At the end of the exam, many candidates burst into tears because the Math and English subjects were too difficult.
Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh - former Director of the Department of Vocational Education, Ministry of Education and Training - said that according to the new general education program, students who have completed grade 12 are expected to achieve English B1 level according to the European Reference Framework (ECFR) but the 2025 high school graduation exam has a series of questions with difficulty exceeding the B1 threshold, both in words and reading comprehension skills.
The reading is academic, the sentence structure is complex, requiring in-depth reasoning and analysis, which is not suitable for the abilities of grade 12 students according to the program's goals. This creates a worried and confused mentality of many parents and students after finishing the high school English exam" - Mr. Vinh commented.
Explaining the difficulty of the exam, Professor Nguyen Ngoc Ha - Head of the exam board, National Steering Committee for the 2025 high school graduation exam - said that the biggest difference this year is that the exam matrix arises randomly during the preparation process, instead of having the same name as in previous years.
He assessed that this approach ensures objectivity, because teachers and learners cannot predict in advance. This is also a way for students to ensure real study and real exam.
According to Mr. Dinh Duc Hien - Executive Director of FPT Bac Giang Inter-level School: "The fundamental innovation of the 2025 exam has shocked many teachers and students. But I think sometimes the shock is necessary to prepare us after a period of intense education on knowledge transfer, the pressure must change".
Exam questions need to be standardized
Mr. Dinh Duc Hien affirmed that this year's high school graduation exam has many new breakthrough points. This change forces schools, teachers, and students to truly change the way they teach and learn.
With this exam, textbook knowledge will only be basic knowledge, requiring additional external data, students will have the ability to think, analyze, and combine different abilities to find answers. However, according to Mr. Hien, the difficulty of the Testing Board is how to do the 50-minute, 9-minute test to meet all the requirements from differentiating students, testing and evaluating different abilities. This will somewhat limit creativity or even reduce external data into the exam.
"In the coming years, we must be closer to educational reality, on the principle of taking the exam for the whole thing. Compiling a difficult exam is not difficult at all, a suitable exam is difficult. And when the exam also has the role of considering graduation and university admission at the same time, there will be certain "bottlenecks" - Mr. Hien said.
From the perspective of an independent expert, Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh raised the problem that the exam questions may not have been standardized by practical testing. While the requirement is that the exam must go through many rounds of testing to assess the difficulty, validity and reliability. The lack of transparency in the exam preparation process is something that cannot be taken lightly for a national exam that affects hundreds of thousands of students each year.
To ensure the stability of the exams, Mr. Vinh said that the Ministry of Education and Training really needs to standardize the team of national exam preparation in terms of both expertise and preparation techniques, design standardized exams, reflect output standards and ensure reliability.
The transition from one extreme to another, not yet prepared and causing "surprise to teachers and students, it is necessary to consider the responsibility of the central and local management agencies" - Mr. Vinh said.
The exam does not exceed the program The Ministry of Education and Training affirmed that this year's high school graduation exam will increase the number of differentiated questions, the content does not exceed the requirements of the new Program. However, the ministry said that it acknowledged the difficulties of the Math and English exam. After that, there will be a specific review when the marking work is completed. Deputy Minister of Education and Training Pham Ngoc Thuong said that he will accept opinions on the exam questions to do better in the following years, on the principle of ensuring the rights of candidates.
