Some 867,000 high school students across Vietnam sat the national graduation exam on Sunday amid the complex developments of the coronavirus outbreaks in the country.

A supervisor delivers exam questions to students at the Sơn La High School for Gifted Students in the northern mountainous province of Sơn La. — VNA/VNS Photo Hữu Quyết

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyễn Hữu Đo, head of the steering committee for the National High School Exam 2020, said inspections showed provinces and cities had prepared well for the exam, including assigning medical workers and youth volunteers to check students’ body temperature and deliver face masks and hand sanitisers.

Đo said the exam must ensure two targets. The first is to be organised safely, ensuring integrity and in accordance with regulations to create trust in the community. The second is to ensure COVID-19 preventive measures.

Due to the risk of COVID-19 transmission as a dozen of provinces and cities reported a few number of positive cases in relation to Đa Nẵng’s outbreak, localities conducted preventive measures strictly, such as sterilising surfaces, keeping distance between students and mandating wearing of face masks.

The Deputy Minister also noted that because students wear face masks, supervisors had to be even more vigilant to detect cheating.

Assessing the literature exam, which was sat on Sunday morning, Vũ Thị Bình, a teacher from the Trần Phu High School in Hanoi, said the questions were close to the curriculum, reality and focused on basic knowledge.

The questions were suitable with the real situation in the complicated pandemic developments, requiring a high sense of responsibility of each citizen towards the country and promoting the people’s role to the nation, she said.

Đao Thị Thanh Mai, a student from the Trần Nguyen Hãn High School in Hải Phòng northern port city, said the exam questions were suitable with the curriculum and students did not have difficulties in completing them.

In the afternoon, the students took Maths tests and on Monday, they will be tested on foreign languages and either social sciences or natural sciences, which will be done in multiple choice format.

Statistics of the Ministry of Education and Training showed more than 26,100 students in 19 provinces and cities could not take the exam on Sunday because they were affected by COVID-19 outbreaks.

Nearly half of the number are students in central city of Đa Nẵng, the country’s current COVID-19 epicentre, with nearly 11,000. More than 9,000 of the students are in the neighbouring province of Quảng Nam and nearly 5,400 are in Đắk Lắk Province in Central Highlands.

The students will attend another exam which will be held later.