VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in recent years has set forth new enrollment policies, but many of them have faced strong opposition from the public.

“Mr Minister (of Education and Training), we don’t want our children to become ‘guinea-pig’” is the title of a story on a Lao Dong newspaper forum which has tens of thousands of comments.

The author, who introduced himself as a parent, commented that Vietnamese parents have big worries about clothes, pens, textbooks and tuition, but they have even bigger concerns about MOET's new policy. 

VNEN, Vietnam Escuela Nueva, described as the ‘new school model for Vietnam, has been stopped in several provinces after parents protested against the application of the model.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in recent years has set forth new enrollment policies, but many of them have faced strong opposition from the public.

Circular 30, expected to create a revolution in assessing primary school students, has also faced strong opposition from the public. Teachers complained that they are overloaded as they have to give comments, instead of marks to students’ school works. Meanwhile, parents complain that their children are getting lazier because they are not afraid of receiving bad marks.

Most recently, MOET once again shocked the public when announcing that a new enrollment policy would be applied from the 2017 academic year.

Big changes for next year’s high-school finals were also announced by MOET at an online dialogue on September 8. 

At the latest finals, students registered to attend exams either at the exam rooms organized by local education departments (if they only want to finish high school), or at exam rooms organized by universities (if they want to apply for university).

However, from the 2017 academic year, there will be only exam rooms presided over by local education departments, while universities will send supervisors to the exam rooms.

However, the major change which has surprised students is the application of five exam subjects – math, literature, foreign languages, natural sciences (with questions in physics, chemistry and biology), and social sciences (with questions in history, geography and citizen education).

As such, students will have to review nine subjects for the finals instead of five as currently applied. 

A student in Ha Tinh province commented that she ‘is afraid of the MOET policies as they are as changeable as the weather’.

“We need to be informed about the changes in exam and enrollment policies three years in advance to adapt to the new circumstances,” she wrote.


Thanh Lich