Analysts have
rung the alarm bell over the fact that many high schools are trying to expel
the students with low academic results, because they fear that the bad students
may badly affect the school’s reputation.

A lot of 12^th
grade students have to leave their schools after the first semester. Thought
This has been seen regularly in the past
many years it still seems to be a surprise to many people. However, not
to educators, because they understand that it is because high schools try to
weed out the bad students in order to ensure their overall achievements. The
problem is that the schools anticipate that the bad students may fail the final
exams, and if so, the schools will not be able to rank high by the end of the
academic year. Therefore, it is better for them to keep only the best. Only the
high schools with high percentages of students passing finals are considered
prestigious.

Raising students’ marks

In a recent
article, Dr Ho Thieu Hung, former Director of the HCM City Education and
Training, also wrote that for the past many years, many high schools, under the
pressure of the “achievement disease” has been trying to weed out the students
with low academic results. As the result, only the students, who are believed
to be able to pass the finals, can stay.

The term
“achievement disease” has been used widely by the Ministry of Education and
Training and educators to describe the phenomenon that schools, , try to obtain
high overall ranking at all costs.

In fact,
the achievement disease happens not only in HCM City,
but in all cities and provinces nationwide. In principle, schools are not
allowed to expel students without legitimate reasons, but no one has criticizes
the behaviour.

Of course,
once a school refuses to receive a student, it would be also difficult for the
student to enroll in another school. Therefore, in order to help create best
conditions for students to leave, the schools are ready to adjust the marks the
students got in the past to “beautify” student’s transcript. With “beautiful”
school reports, students will find it easier to find a place at other schools.
When applying to other schools, students will never say that they have been
asked to leave previous schools, but they simply say they have moved houses

Who to blame? the Ministry of
Education and Training (MOET)

Educators
have many times called on schools not to expel bad students, while government
agencies have threatened to discipline the schools that violate the current
regulations. However, nothing has changed.

Experts
have pointed out that it is the mechanism set up by MOET that creates the
“achievement disease”. Every year, MOET calculates the numbers of students who
pass final exams and gives awards to schools based on these figures.

Educators
believe that in order to eliminate the achievement disease, more reasonable
methods to evaluate education achievements are needed. They said it is not
reasonable to use the numbers of students passing final exams. In principle,
the percentage of high school graduates alone still cannot reflect the schools’ education quality.

In 2009,
51,640 students in HCM
City attended the final
exam, while the figure was 59,000 in Thanh Hoa province. The census showed that
in 2009, HCM City had 7,123,340 people, while Thanh
Hoa had 3,400,239 people. If comparing the two localities, one would see that HCM City
has 7 12^th graders out of 1000 people, while the ratio is 17/1000 in
Thanh Hoa. If so, Thanh Hoa must rank above HCM City
in general education. However, in accordance with the current method applied by
MOET, HCM City, which has high number of students
passing high school exams, has always been holding higher positions in the
ranking than Thanh Hoa. In 2007, for example, HCM City
ranked first, while Thanh Hoa ranked 42^nd out of 64 provinces and
cities.

Source:
Nguoi lao dong