Universities have said that they have sped up on marking exam papers in order to finish the work by the end of the month. It is expected that exam papers will see lower marks this year than last year.

The HCM City University of Education only began marking its 43,000 exam papers on July 17 and expects to finish the job within 10 days.

The noteworthy thing is that many universities have predicted that exam papers this year will see lower marks than last year.

An university said that it had just marked two papers it chose at random, and both the papers were below average for literature.

Other universities have reported low marks for mathematics.

According to Nguyen Tien Dung, Head of the Training Division under the HCM City University of Technical Education, no exam paper has got 10 for mathematics. There are a big proportion of papers that are below average in mathematics but there has been no zero.

Lam Truong Thoai, Head of the Training Division under the HCM City National University, has also predicted that marks for mathematics will be lower than in 2008, while having reported a high percentage of below average papers, including a zero. There has been no paper with a 10; the highest so far is 9.75.

Difficult to find teachers to mark exams

Universities have complained that the fee to mark exams is unexpectedly high this year.

The HCM City Open University, for example, pays 6,000 dong per paper, while the HCM City University of Education pays 8,000 and non-state universities pay up to 10,000 dong.

Universities have had to invite teachers from high schools to mark exam papers as well in order to meet the required pace.

Required marks expected to be lower than last year’s

The Hanoi Medical University, University of Foreign Trade, University of Civil Engineering and Thang Long University have predicted that the required marks to get into the universities will be lower than last year’s.

In 2008, the Hanoi Medical University was the one which set the highest required marks (28.5 for three subjects). However, the university’s President Nguyen Duc Hinh said that as the exam questions this year were more challenging than last year’s, the required marks are expected to be lower.

The Hanoi Foreign Trade University last year required students to have 28 marks to be enrolled in the university. The required marks may be the same or 0.5-1 mark lower than the last year’s level, according to Head of Training Division Le Thi Thu Thuy.

VietNamNet/VNE, DT, TP