Hoang Anh, a parent in Cau Giay district, was informed at the parents’ year-end meeting that her daughter had received the “excellent student” title for the 2014-2015 academic year. 

However, this, for Anh, was neither good nor bad news, because Anh’s daughter is just one of 40 excellent students out of 45 students in her class.

“When I was at primary school, I rarely got the title ‘excellent student’. This title was only rewarded to very capable students, about 5-10 students in our class,” Anh said about her school days 35 years ago. 

This situation exists not only at Anh’s daughter’s school, a school where only the best students in the district are admitted, but at the majority of schools in large cities.

Another parent said his son, a student at a mid-tier secondary school in Hanoi, said 42 out of 57 students in his son’s class were “excellent”, 12 “good” and only three “average”.

A secondary school in district 1 in HCM City reported that since 2006, the proportion of excellent students at the school had always been between 51 and 60 percent.

The headmaster of the school said children have a better living environment and better conditions for learning.

“They are given most favorable conditions to study. I know many children from well-off families do not have to do housework. They only have to eat, sleep and study,” she said.

However, analysts said the reported number of excellent students is “incredibly high”

The former high ranking official of the HCM City Education and Training Department noted that teachers tend to give high marks to students to satisfy their parents. 

“Parents would be happier if their children often get high marks for their school works,” he explained.

“In the past, the number of excellent students in one school was not higher than 2 percent of total students,” he said. “But teachers would be considered ‘incapable’ if they have bad students.”

Le Thuy Duong, who gives private tutoring lessons to a seventh grader in Hanoi, also noted that though the seventh grader’s learning capability was “average”, he often got 9 and 10, the highest scores in the marking scale, for his school work.

Thanh Nien quoted a teacher at a primary school in HCM City as saying that the high achievements gained by the majority of students in large cities are “unrealistic” and “fabricated”.

Thanh Lich