Mr. Ho Tan Minh - Chief of Office of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training said that the Department is currently developing a strategy, from next year it will expand admission to grade 10 in some areas with sufficient facilities and educational resources.
This means that students in these areas do not have to take the 10th grade entrance exam, which will greatly reduce exam pressure.
Currently, Ho Chi Minh City enrolls 10th grade students in two methods. In which, admission is applied to the High School in Thanh An island commune, Con Dao special zone and the Ethnic Minority Boarding School (formerly located in Ba Ria - Vung Tau province); the remaining areas implement enrollment by exams.
This information makes many parents happy because students will reduce the pressure of extra classes and exam preparation. But at the same time, it also raises concerns about input quality and fairness in education.
First of all, it is not difficult to understand why parents want to abolish the 10th grade exam. For many years, this exam in big cities has become a fierce competition. 6th grade students have been reminded to take extra classes to prepare for 10th grade; many families are almost revolving around their children's extra classes schedule.
Some parents have to rush in the evening to bring rice to pick up their children from school to tutoring centers, and then sit for hours at cafes waiting for their children to finish school before returning home. Some students stay up until 1 am to prepare for exams.
An exam where pressure weighs heavily on both students and parents is clearly something that needs to be reviewed.
But reducing exam pressure does not mean completely eliminating the screening mechanism. Because general education, especially high school, is directly related to the foundational quality of future human resources.
In the past, Ho Chi Minh City once had a period of 10th grade admission in many districts (old) and high schools at that time reflected the increasing situation of students losing their foundation, many students not keeping up with the program and then getting bored and dropping out of school.
This shows that if the exam is abolished but there is no sufficiently objective and effective alternative evaluation mechanism, the pressure may decrease in the short term, but the quality of education faces long-term risks.
Another issue that also needs to be viewed directly is fairness.
If admission is completely based on transcripts, will it ensure objectivity when the assessment level between secondary schools today is still very different?
In fact, there are schools that set very difficult questions, mark very tightly, but there are also schools that have easy questions, so the transcript score will be very high and does not reflect the true nature. Not to mention that teachers will be lenient in marking scores so that students have better transcripts. At that time, students who actually study can suffer disadvantages.
Therefore, the problem should not be set in the style of either taking the exam or abandoning the exam. What is more necessary is to reform the admission method so that it both reduces pressure and maintains input standards.
Finally, the pressure of taking the 10th grade exam as it has been for a long time, largely comes from the huge disparity between public high schools, from the psychology of preferring top schools, and from the fact that society has not really placed equal trust in vocational education, continuing education or non-public options.
Therefore, to reduce the pressure of the 10th grade exam in a fundamental way, it cannot just stop at abolishing or keeping the exam. But more importantly, it is to improve the uniform quality of the entire general education system, and at the same time open up many learning and career paths that are attractive enough for parents and students to no longer see public 10th grade as a "door to survival".
