VietNamNet Bridge - Everything has become as tangled as bamboo shavings as the Hanoi Education and Training Department has changed its decision on tests overnight.

On April 17, the enrolment plans of three secondary schools – Marie Curie, Nguyen Tat Thanh and Luong The Vinh – received approval from the Hanoi Education and Training Department, under which they would select best students by testing students’ abilities. The other schools would select students by considering their learning records. 

However, the department’s decision was only valid for several hours, because on the evening of the same day, the department’s deputy director Pham Van Dai released an express dispatch which asked the schools not to implement the plans. 

The dispatch stipulates that secondary schools can only select students by considering their learning records and abilities, and they must not organize entrance exams under any form – no exam, and no comprehensive knowledge tests or EQ tests.

The education department explained that the ban was imposed because it has to follow the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) instruction that schools must not organize entrance exams to enroll sixth graders. 

In other words, the Hanoi People’s Committee disagrees with the Hanoi education department’s plan on allowing three schools to select students through tests of general knowledge.

Schools, students suffer

The dispatch from the Hanoi education department is described by analysts as a “ladle of cold water” poured on educators who had been hurriedly preparing to enroll students in accordance with the approved plans.

A parent in Cau Giay District in Hanoi complained about the series of decisions released within a short time related to secondary school enrolment.

“Everything is so puzzling. I don’t know how to prepare my daughter for the race to secondary schools,” he said. His daughter is seeking placement at the Hanoi-Amsterdam School for the Gifted, the most wanted school in Hanoi.

Professor Van Nhu Cuong, headmaster of Luong The Vinh School in Hanoi, wrote on his Facebook page that an “avoidable crisis” has broken out in secondary education, which originated from MOET’s policy on saying ‘no’ to the entrance exam.

Cuong said that MOET’s policy was “odd” and “impractical” and has made students and parents suffer.

“Our great efforts to design IQ (general comprehensive) tests have been in vain,” Cuong said.

MOET said it prohibited entrance exams to secondary schools to help ease pressure on young students’ shoulders and to be sure that secondary education is universalized in Vietnam.

However, educators believe that this is not a reasonable explanation, because only one percent of primary school graduates nationwide plan to attend the entrance exams, which means that the entrance exam-scheme would only affect a small percentage of students.

Mai Chi