Regarding the recent decision by the Ministry of Education to abolish the consideration of academic records, as a high school math teacher, I have a few things to share about this.

First of all, during the learning process, every student always has to take exams or tests such as oral tests, 15-minute tests, one-period tests, semester tests... For those of us who teach final year students, specifically, I teach Math, the test questions are always checked closely, usually taken from practice tests for students to do like the high school graduation exam.

As a result, when students take the high school graduation exam, their scores are not much different from the scores of the exams they took during the school year. That is, we divide the big exam like the high school graduation exam into small exams like semester exams, year-end exams... The scores of these tests/exams are the scores recorded in each student's report card. When the education system is honest, if students want good scores in their report card, they have no other way but to study seriously.

In addition, students can take the aptitude tests of two national universities - similar to the SAT and ACT exams in the US. To get high scores, students must study very seriously and have good thinking. Therefore, if there is no graduation exam, students will not take any exams. Many people think that if there is no exam (high school graduation), students will not study, so if advanced educational systems do not organize exams, their students will not study? This is obviously absurd.

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Candidates taking the 2025 high school graduation exam in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Nguyen Hue

Another important issue that makes many people support graduation exams instead of admission is because they think that admission is unfair. This thinking is probably because we do not know that admission is much more complicated.

Last year, my friend in the US had a child who was accepted to Brown University (one of the top universities in the US). The child was accepted because he had A grades in all subjects; maximum SAT and ACT scores; highly rated extracurricular activities, essays and self-introduction videos ...

My friend said: Leadership skills are a must if you want to get into top schools and the journey to build these skills is very long because the school evaluates based on the process and time you put in, not the number of activities you participate in.

In addition, it is very important that the candidate has letters of recommendation from 3 people, including a person who directly manages the student at the school, a teacher who has directly taught the student for a long time (about 2 years or more) or has worked with the student for a period of time, for example, a soccer coach, a city councilor, a neighborhood group where the student participates in volunteer work, etc.

This method of selection, on the one hand, will force students to always try hard in the learning process, on the other hand, can recruit candidates with real quality. There are candidates who have perfect SAT/ACT scores; have high academic records but are still not accepted by big schools because of extracurricular activities or poor essays.

This method can accurately assess a student's ability because it considers and recognizes their long learning and training process shown through their report cards and essays, not just one or two exams.

The United States has a developed education system based on admission by selection, not by rigorous examination. They have been doing this for a long time, we should take note and learn from them. Currently, only a few countries such as China, Korea, Vietnam… still hold rigorous high school graduation exams.

A recent survey found that South Koreans earn more money than before but are not happier. It is possible that the fierce exams are partly to blame. In Vietnam, school years used to be associated with memorable, dreamy years, but now many people think of their school days as haunted by the fierce exams.

I still maintain my opinion as in the article from 10 years ago, that for now, we can let students graduate even with low scores, but must clearly state the results in the graduation certificate, in the transcript. For example, candidate Tran Van A: Score: 15; Ranking: poor... Looking at the graduation certificate like that, students will know their abilities, who they are, where they can take the exam, take the university entrance exam or go to vocational school... Gradually, we will move towards eliminating the graduation and university exams - two exams that are both costly and ineffective, instead, admission is based on scores and essays as developed countries still implement.

More universities will not consider high school transcripts for admission in 2025. Schools will not use high school transcripts for admission but only as a preliminary admission condition from 2025.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/khi-nen-giao-duc-trung-thuc-xet-tuyen-hoc-ba-van-mang-lai-su-cong-bang-2345097.html