Education experts have proposed significant changes across the board for Vietnamese education, including ending the university entrance exams and lowering the number of subjects on the school curriculum. On September 19, talking about the education reform plan, Bui Manh Nhi, official from Ministry of Education and Training and a member of the plan's drafting committee said, "big changes to outdated policies, teaching staff and managers are all necessary, but, the key factors required to further improve Vietnamese education are changes in the examination process and in the way we evaluate students."Vietnamese examinations are always said to be poorly designed, resulting in many students learning the lessons by heart because their ability for using the knowledge is rarely tested. In this draft plan, examinations will be revised. In addition, universities and colleges are not required to hold entrance exams as before, instead, they will choose students based on their achievements in high school. However, universities and colleges are allowed to hold additional exams if they seem necessary. Officials from the Ministry of Education and Training said, "The reform will fix our current shortcomings and reduce the huge cost of holding so many examinations." Deputy Head of the Ministry of Education and Training said they will reduce the number of mandatory subjects. "Students will have more room in which to show their abilities. Currently, a lot of the information presented in the textbooks of, say, the 5th grade does not take into consideration that the same information might have already been seen in the 4th grade, and this kind of repetition bores the students." he said. Starting in 2015, students may only have as many as eight mandatory subjects a semester. For example, mandatory subjects for primary school students will be reduced from 11 to 3-6 and the subjects for secondary students will be reduced from 13 to 8. Because high school students, especially 11th and 12th graders, are so concerned with career choices the mandatory subjects will only be Maths, Literature and a foreign language. Students will choose three other optional subjects that they think will benefit them in the future. (dtinews.vn Sept 20)
