27% of Vietnam Students in 2-in-1 Exam Score below University Admission Level

About 27% of 726,693 Vietnamese students who signed up to use their scores from the two-in-one national exam for university enrolment would not be able to enter any colleges or universities next year as their scores are below the passing threshold of 15 points for a combination of three subjects, according to an announcement from the Ministry of Education and Training. The ministry, however, said that by setting the university admission score threshold at 15, there would be at least 531,180 qualified students, 1.52 times as much as the target enrolment for the 2015-2016 academic year, accounting for more than half of the total number of students taking the test. The 15-point threshold is the floor score universities and colleges nationwide can use to begin setting their own admission baseline starting this August 1st. Students with scores lower than 15 for a combination of any three subjects could retake the test next year or apply to the 200 universities and colleges that are permitted by the MoET to enroll up to 50,000 total under their own customized program, such as via a review of high school performance. This is the first year Vietnam has begun combining the high school graduation exam with the university entrance exam, a move many education experts said helped the government save money on testing organization but nonetheless only tested students on their rote-learning ability. On July 24, it was released that about 91.58%, or 816,830, of Vietnamese students taking part in the high school graduation exam have passed the test after scoring at least one point on each test subject, marking the lowest passing rate in the past five years. A detailed breakdown of test results showed that Mathematics has the highest number of students scoring zero while no students score zero on Foreign Language exams. However, up to 59.3%, of 554,445 students taking the foreign language exams, mainly English, scored only 2.5 out of 10. Vietnam, which now has about three million students at 700 universities, colleges and vocational training schools, is known for its memorization- and exam-intensive education system, which is influenced by Confucianism. The government has received significant foreign aid, estimated at over $2 billion between 1993 and 2012, to conduct education and training projects. Most recently, the government has decided to allocate VND3.1 trillion ($150 million) funded by the International Development Association under the World Bank for university education development in the 2015-2016 period, in addition to a credit line of $77 million for a project on reforming the Vietnamese general education system. According to the World Bank, Vietnam was spending a large share of its public resources on higher education but was not meeting the huge demand. “There was a recognized need in reforming public financing to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and equity of the government’s budget, as well as improving transparency and accountability in public financial management in the education sub sector,” the bank said. In the past decades since the country opened up its economy, an increasing number of Vietnamese parents are now sending their children for higher education overseas. According to the “Learning for Life” report by HSBC, Vietnamese parents spent an estimated $1.87 billion on overseas study-related expenses in 2013. The MoET said that 125,000 Vietnamese students studied abroad in 2013, up 15% from 2012 and marking the largest jump since 2008-2009. (vnexpress.net July 28, worldbank.org July)