Will university admission scores decrease?

2025 is the first year that the Ministry of Education and Training develops exam questions without relying on a question bank with closed, testing, and even standardized processes.

The average score of the 2025 high school graduation exam is expected to be lower than that of 2024, especially in math and English, leading to a likely decrease in the standard score for university admission.

On July 13, the 2025 high school graduation exam councils of provinces and cities summarized the exam marking work and sent the results data to the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). It is expected that at exactly 8:00 a.m. on July 16, the exam councils will announce the results for nearly 1.17 million candidates.

A score of 9 in literature is very rare.

In this year's exam, Hanoi mobilized more than 800 officials and teachers from high schools in the city to participate in marking the exams. In all subjects, only literature was marked by teachers, the remaining multiple-choice subjects were marked by machines.

Regarding the results of the literature exam, a teacher who participated in grading the exam in a northern province said that this year the quality of the exam was quite good compared to expectations. Before grading, this teacher was worried that candidates would not be able to adapt to the new way of writing the exam, but the results showed that the common score was around 6-7.

According to this teacher, candidates who have a solid grasp of knowledge, are interested in current issues such as the merger of provinces and cities, and know how to apply knowledge about love for their homeland and country in the social discussion section all have a chance to score points. There have been exams that scored 9 points, but in general, the number of exams that scored 8.5-9 points is quite rare. This year, candidates will have difficulty achieving a perfect score in literature.

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

According to many teachers, this year's math exam has significantly changed in structure, increasing application and high-level application questions. The English exam is considered to have a higher level of difficulty in both vocabulary and sentence structure.

This year's high school graduation exam scores are forecast to be lower than in 2024, especially in math and English. This leads to a possible decrease in the standard score for university admission based on graduation exam scores, especially for the D01, A01, and D07 combinations.

An examination expert said that after the results are announced, if the test questions really exceed the required competency framework for high school students, the grading scale should be reconsidered. Re-evaluating the difficulty of the questions and eliminating those that exceed the required threshold is a way to ensure fairness between students from different regions and learning conditions.

Need a test bank

2025 is the first year that the Ministry of Education and Training will develop exam questions without relying on a question bank with closed, testing, and even standardized processes.

Professor Nguyen Ngoc Ha, Deputy Director of the Department of Quality Management - Ministry of Education and Training, said that the process of building exam questions based on question banks has been implemented in recent years for the 2006 GeneralEducation Program. With the 2018 General Education Program, instead of using a question bank, the Ministry of Education and Training uses a question library, but this question library is only for reference.

Professor Nguyen Ngoc Ha commented that this year's exam questions were developed based on the method proposed by experts, on the basis of basic reference to published questions, tested for difficulty, and the level of response to teaching and learning. This year's exam questions are very different from previous years. Previously, the exam questions were developed based on a pre-existing matrix, but this year there is no such matrix. Instead, during the exam preparation process, the software will generate the matrix in a completely random manner.

However, according to experts, with standardized exams such as high school graduation, before being included in the official exam, the assessment of whether a question is difficult or easy, how it differentiates between groups of candidates, and what its quality is should not be based solely on the team that compiles and evaluates the questions. This needs to be scientifically evaluated through the process of designing experiments and analyzing data applying measurement theories.

A lecturer at Hanoi National University of Education suggested that the high school graduation exam for candidates nationwide should be developed according to pedagogical, scientific, standardized principles, focusing on learners and aiming for fairness, reliability, and measuring the correct output standards of the General Education Program. The exam should be standardized through practical testing, and must go through many rounds of testing to assess difficulty, validity, and reliability.

This expert suggested that to ensure the stability of the national high school graduation exam, the Ministry of Education and Training needs to standardize the test-making team in terms of both expertise and test-making techniques. It is necessary to design standardized tests that accurately reflect output standards and ensure reliability.

Many experts also agree that it is urgent to build a national standardized question bank for the high school graduation exam, because this is an important technical foundation that has not yet been established. Building questions for an exam with up to a million candidates is very important, and cannot be based solely on the experience of experts.

In addition, matrices should be carefully constructed and evaluated based on specific principles to ensure balance and representation of both content streams and cognitive levels. Another factor that needs to be considered is the similarity of exam codes in the same year, as well as between years, to have a basis for comparison and create fairness for the exam.

Review from July 16 to 25

The Ministry of Education and Training said that as planned, the examination councils will announce the results of the 2025 high school graduation exam at 8:00 a.m. on July 16. The Departments of Education and Training and high schools will complete the recognition of high school graduation by July 18 at the latest. By July 22 at the latest, schools will complete the issuance of temporary graduation certificates; send certificates of exam results; return transcripts and related certificates (originals) to candidates.

The deadline for receiving appeal applications and making the appeal list is from July 16 to July 25. The consideration of recognition of high school graduation after the appeal will be carried out no later than August 8.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/diem-chuan-xet-tuyen-dai-hoc-se-giam-196250713213806197.htm