National High School Exam 2016: Scores announced before July 25

Immediately after the final exam of the national high school exam (July 4) ended, exam clusters across the country started marking exam papers to announce exam scores to candidates before July 25.

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Open questions, open grading

Mr. Mai Van Trinh - Director of the Department of Testing and Quality Assurance (Ministry of Education and Training) said that the biggest change in this year's exam marking is the rounding of scores in multiple-choice exams. Specifically, the exam marking team will conduct scoring and convert scores by computer to a 10-point scale and round to 2 decimal places for each multiple-choice exam.

“That is, the Examination Council can take up to 0.01 points. So, suppose a candidate must get 4.995 points to be rounded up to 5 points, below that level even if it is 4.99, it must still remain the same” – Mr. Trinh said.

In addition, the review of the exam is also clearly regulated: Exams with a review score that differs from the first round of grading (announced) by 0.25 points or more will have their scores adjusted. In case the review score differs by 0.5 points or more, a direct dialogue must be organized between the first round of grading officers and the review score officers. If there are signs of negativity, it will be handled according to regulations. The official score of the exam after the review is submitted by the head of the review board to the chairman of the examination council for approval.

For essay tests, the test has application questions to assess students' abilities, requiring students to be creative. In addition to applying the knowledge they have learned, students can also express their thoughts and feelings in their writing.

“The questions are so open, so the exam answers and grading will certainly be… open. When creating open answers, we do not count the points for scoring, but rather guide the grading, the answers suggest key content, meeting the objectives of the questions. The Ministry has carefully prepared the exam grading staff in the past year,” said Mr. Trinh.

Mr. Trinh also added that for the exams that have unique, creative and interesting ideas, although the regulations do not have any regulations on bonus points, in these cases the examination board will also consider giving reasonable points to encourage the candidates.

Worried about local teachers… being gentle

This year, Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry presided over the exam cluster in Tay Ninh province. After completing the exam supervision, at the end of July 4, the school transferred all exam papers to Ho Chi Minh City for cutting and grading.

According to Mr. Pham Thai Son - Deputy Director of the School's Admissions Consulting and Training Services Center, the school is expected to start grading exams on July 7 with about 200 teachers in charge of grading essay subjects.

“Most of the teachers who mark the exams are from the school and the HCM City Department of Education and Training, the remaining 40% are from Tay Ninh province. However, the heads of the marking teams, the heads of the marking subjects, the secretariat, the testing department, and the testing department will be in charge of the University of Food Industry, the teachers from Tay Ninh province will only participate in marking the exams,” said Mr. Son.

“Each test goes through nearly 10 steps of marking and checking to get the final result. After the 2 teachers finish marking, the secretary will check the score difference between the 2 supervisors. If the score difference is too large, the test will be marked publicly.”

Mr. Pham Thai Son

According to Mr. Son, this year's exam marking will go through two independent rounds. The first teacher will write on the marking sheet. Apart from the cross-stripes on the remaining paper, the exam marking teacher is not allowed to write anything else on the candidates' papers. After finishing the first marking, the secretariat will take out the marking sheets and hand over the exam bag to the head of the exam marking department to draw lots for the teacher to mark the second time. The teacher who marks the first time is not allowed to mark the exam bag that was marked the first time. The teacher who marks the second time will mark directly on the candidates' papers. After that, another team of teachers will check and mark again...

Meanwhile, some schools hosting provincial exam clusters said that because they are concerned that local teachers will give "preferential" marks to students from their home province, they plan not to invite provincial teachers to grade the exams.

For example, Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry, the unit in charge of the university exam cluster in Dong Nai with the second largest number of candidates in the Southern region (after Ho Chi Minh City), also said that it will not invite Dong Nai teachers to participate in marking the papers. The school representative said that the school has sent an official dispatch to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training requesting to introduce about 50% of the teachers to mark the national high school exam papers, the remaining 50% of the examiners are lecturers of the school. In case there are not enough teachers from the introduction of the department, the school will directly invite outside teachers instead of inviting Dong Nai teachers to participate in marking the papers.

Similarly, Ho Chi Minh City University of Agriculture and Forestry also said that all the examiners were lecturers of the school, high school teachers in Ho Chi Minh City and some provinces such as Dong Nai, Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau. Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education also only copied the exam papers in Phan Thiet City (Binh Thuan) and brought the exam papers to Ho Chi Minh City for marking.

According to Associate Professor, Dr. Do Van Dung - Principal of the school: "The school has sent an official dispatch to the Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City and the Department of Education and Training of Dong Nai province requesting support for exam marking personnel from teachers of high schools in District 9, Thu Duc District and Dong Nai province, instead of using teachers from Binh Thuan province to ensure fairness...".

Timelines to keep in mind

- Complete grading and report preliminary results by July 20 at the latest, and announce exam scores afterward.

- No later than July 25, the Ministry of Education and Training will announce graduation results.

- By July 27 at the latest, high schools will issue temporary graduation certificates and return all certificates to candidates.

- By July 30 at the latest, send the exam result certificate and receive the candidate's appeal application.

- From August 1 to 20, schools begin accepting applications for first choice.

Source Xaluan.com