Education official arrested for Vietnam national exam fraud

Vu Trong Luong, Deputy Head of the Ha Giang’s Education Department’s Testing and Quality Assurance unit, is being probed under charge of “abusing positions and powers while performing official duties,” which is punishable by up to 15 years in jail under Vietnamese criminal law.

A major investigation has been launched into the fraud that shocked the nation last week.

The epicenter of the fraud was Ha Giang Province in northern Vietnam where over 5,400 candidates took part in the examination. The results of at least 114 candidates were illegally changed to increase scores in individual subjects by as much as 90 percent and that of cumulative scores by more than 17 percent.

Preliminary investigations have found that over 330 test sheets on eight subjects were heavily altered.

Luong was found to have scanned the candidates’ test answers into a computer, before replacing them both digitally and physically with official test answers released by the Ministry of Education and Training.

The education ministry on Wednesday also formed a team to inspect unusually high scores of students in the nearby Son La and Lang Son Provinces.

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

The national 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 three days, from June 25 to June 27.