According to the Regulations on High School Graduation Exams from 2025 issued by the Ministry of Education and Training, candidates possessing 1 of the following 20 certificates will be exempted from the Foreign Language exam in the High School Graduation Exam.
Of these, 12 are English certificates, the rest are Russian, French, Chinese, German, and Japanese. As for Korean, there is no certificate on the list.
Certificates exempted from the Foreign Language exam when considering high school graduation in 2025 include:
The 2025 high school graduation exam is the first exam following the 2018 general education program, scheduled to take place on June 26-27.
Candidates will only take 4 subjects, including 2 compulsory subjects (Literature, Math) and 2 optional subjects (from the remaining subjects studied in grade 12. Compared to previous years, the 2025 high school graduation exam has 1 less exam session and 2 less subjects.
The new point in the 2025 high school graduation exam is that although the Foreign Language certificate will continue to be used for exam exemption in the graduation recognition consideration, it will not be converted into 10 points as before. The graduation score calculation formula does not include the Foreign Language score in this case.
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, this method continues to encourage learning foreign languages but aims for greater fairness in graduation exams. For example, previously, students with an IELTS 4.0 certificate were also converted to a score of 10, just like students with an IELTS 8.5 score.
The Ministry also reminded candidates that the exemption from the exam only applies when considering recognition of high school graduation. If candidates want to use their graduation exam score in Foreign Language to apply for university admission, they still need to take this exam.
