News and Events

Many proctors face punishment after videos showing candidates cheating during the 2013 national high school graduation exam at a high school in Hanoi were sent to the local Department of Education and Training.

A source told Tuoi Tre that departmental officials questioned these proctors after verifying the clips, and are set to penalize them on charges of breaching exam regulations.

Earlier the Ministry of Education and Training received the videos from an unnamed person, and handed them over to the Hanoi education department for verification.

In the clips students were caught discussing questions and copying each other’s answers while the proctors had gone out of the exam rooms, or simply stayed inside but ignored the cheating.

Education officials confirmed that the videos were shot at Quang Trung – Ha Dong High School on June 4, the last day of the three-day exam that began on June 2.

Nguyen Vinh Hien, a deputy education minister, slammed the administrators, urging Hanoi education officials to throw the book at them.

But neither the ministry nor the Hanoi department has made any reference to any form of punishment for the cheaters themselves.

Cheating has been rampant in Vietnam’s exams for years, with a scandal at another high school in the north rocking the entire country last year.

Twelfth graders at Doi Ngo High School in Bac Giang Province were filmed cheating on their tests during the national high school graduation exam while proctors merely stood by to watch, and even helped them with it.

The video, shot by a candidate who later survived a crackdown by the ministry for bringing a recording device into the exam room, went viral and sent shockwaves across the nation.

Education authorities then disciplined forty-two educators and school staff members, including the dismissal of a principal and two vice principals, in the aftermath of the disgrace.

No candidates were chastised or failed in this incident.

Following the scandal, a poll by Tuoi Tre newspaper and local sociologists revealed that 85 percent of test-takers agreed that cheating dominated the 2012 high school graduation exam.

The survey questioned 500 high school graduates from 36 provinces and cities, who had sat for the exam, after the education ministry announced that 98.97 percent of candidates had passed it.

Among those polled, 84.2 percent said discussing test questions was rife, while 83.5 percent reported seeing their peers copy each other’s answers.

More than one-third (36.4 percent) said proctors watched test-takers talk over questions, and one-fourth (23.4 percent) confirmed the use of cheat sheets.

About one million 12th-graders take the exam, which is mandatory for those who want to go to college, every year.