By Sam Taylor Jul 8, 2005, 10:46 GMT
Hanoi - Tea-stand holders at the side of the Ministry of Education in Vietnam's capital have been having a busy time recently. It is university entrance exam season and for the last week, as well as cigarettes and bitter green tea, the vendors have been selling "lifebuoys," tiny photocopies containing exam answers.
Four police officers and two security guards have been posted outside the ministry to try to deter "lifebuoy" sales, but the tea ladies say that the cash they have given police will ensure they turn a blind eye.
For Vietnam's young population, competition for university places is fierce. By Monday, 900,000 students will have taken entrance tests, but only a small fraction of applicants will be admitted.
With around a million new job seekers per year coming onto the market in Vietnam, university is seen as vastly improving employment prospects.
"Everyone wishes to get a position at university but only a quarter or a fifth of applicants will get a place," Professor Banh Tien Long, Deputy Minister of Education and Training told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
In the past, ringers have been hired to take exams for other students with cash, and some examinees have used mobile telephones with tiny Bluetooth earpieces. The most common way is still the "life buoy," long, thin pieces of paper full of answers written in tiny font, costing between 1.20 and 3.50 dollars apiece. Folded tightly, the cheat sheets can be concealed and discreetly consulted in the examination room.
Five hundred thousand applicants took exams earlier this week and the remaining 400,000 will test this weekend and a crackdown on huge-scale cheating that used to occur is having some effect, according to the vice minister of education.
"The number of students caught cheating this year has reduced dramatically," said Professor Long. "The use of high-tech aids such as mobile phones is not as common. In particular the normal scene of 'lifebuoys' littering the paths and exam halls after exams as we have seen in the past wasn't found much this year."
Nineteen year-old Nguyen Thu Huong from Ninh Binh, a rural province 90 kilometres south of Hanoi, failed the entrance exam last year. She is trying again, but said that the risks of getting caught cheating have increased.
"I have to take exams in literature, history and geography, and there is a lot of information I have to remember, but I won't use lifebuoys" Hong said Friday as she registered for the tests.
"Actually, my brother already got me some but I wont bring them into the exams. The regulations are really strict and the possibility of getting caught is very high."
There is immense pressure on students to enter university, as those who are unsuccessful end up trying for relatively scarce jobs, or attend vocational training colleges, widely viewed as inferior to university.
"University will ensure my future much better than the college back home," said 19 year-old Hong. "It is a lot of pressure because my family is very hopeful, so I will try my hardest."
Officials declined to give estimates of the percentage of students cheating on the exams, but recognize the seriousness of the problem.
"I think it is a really big problem now," said Le Hung Tien, the head of the foreign-language faculty at Vietnam National University. "The whole of society has become aware that this is a very big problem and if we don't do anything about it now, we may suffer in the future."
More outspoken academics believe that not just the examination system needs changing, but that the whole of the third-level education system in Vietnam needs shaking up.
"Cheating in exams is a minor problem in comparison to the education system as a whole which needs to be renovated from its current principles in the near future," said Professor Ho Ngoc Dai, former director of the Centre for Educational Technology under the Ministry for Education.
"Students have been dictated lessons which they must learn by heart, and have been given no chance to think for themselves. This way of studying and teaching has lasted too long and must be changed," said the retired educator.
Changes in the exams are planned as part of a larger overhaul of the system, according to the vice minister.
"The ministry has been constructing a new plan for the renewal of university education, and one of the main points will be to change the method of entrance exams," said Deputy Minister Long. "Multiple choice methods will be applied and by 2009 there will be one exam whose test results will be used for high school graduation, and university and college enrollment."
Associate professor Tien from the national university believes that improvements in the exam system and teaching system are being made, but slowly.
"The focus in the past has been knowledge," Tien said. "But now we are shifting the focus to skills and know-how. However, we can't do it overnight."
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