Another official probed in Vietnam’s national exam fraud

Nguyen Thanh Nhan, 42, Deputy Head of the Testing and Quality Assurance Office of the northern province of Son La, will be investigated for "abuse of power or position in performance of official duties," provincial police said.

She had allegedly changed answers on test sheets and altered students’ scores in the latest national high school graduation exam.

Nhan is the sixth official under investigation for involvement in this case in Son La. Last month, five members of the Son La Province’s multiple-choice exam marking team were also placed under investigation on similar charges.

These moves are part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the national high school exam fraud in which a number of education officials in the nearby Ha Giang and Hoa Binh provinces have also been put under probe.

The fraud was first exposed in Ha Giang and so far, it has been found that the results of over 372 tests taken by 114 candidates in the three provinces were heavily altered. Scores in individual subjects were inflated by as much as 90 percent and cumulative scores went up by more than 17 percent.

The exposure has ignited discussions over systemetic flaws in the education system that facilitated the falsification of results. No conclusions or verdicts have been made.

Vietnam’s national high school graduation exam is considered to be a make-or-break event for the students, determining if they can enter a good university or not.

Most families in Vietnam view it as a crucial step that helps decide their children's future career life, and thus the high school years and the exam season in particular are usually a stressful family affair.

The exam requires candidates to undertake mandatory exams in Math, Literature and Foreign Language, while making a choice between natural sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) and social sciences (History, Geography and Ethics).

This year, the examination lasted for three days, from June 25-27.