A poll by Tuoi Tre newspaper and local sociologists has shown that 85 percent of test-takers agreed cheating dominated the 2012 high school graduation exam.

The results back up longheld beliefs that academic dishonesty runs rampant across the national exams, in which administrators appear eager to pass candidates to manufacture sky-high success rates.

To check the 98.97 percent success rate announced by the Ministry of Education and Training, the survey questioned 500 high school graduates from 36 provinces and cities who had sat for this year’s exam.

Among those surveyed, 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 deliberate over questions, and one-fourth (23.4 percent) confirmed the use of cheat sheets.

Nearly 1 million 12th-graders took the exams June 2 to 4.

In other examples of cheating, students brought in cellphones, while proctors ignored and sometimes provided the cheet sheets, which test-takers read in restrooms.

‘They told the truth’

The poll offers authentic and reliable information, said to Dr. Ho Thieu Hung, former director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training.

Similarly, prof ... Xem thêm

The Hanoi People’s Court yesterday sentenced a young woman to 15 months of probation for joking that there might be a bomb in her luggage while she was onboard a plane last year.
Ho Thi Thanh Tuyen, 25 and from Da Lat, was charged with "disrupting airway traffic,” the court said.

In July 2011, shortly after taking her seat on a flight home from Hanoi, Tuyen reportedly held onto her baggage despite a flight attendant Bui Tuan Anh’s request that she store it. When the plane prepared to take off, Tuyen again refused, saying, "What would you think if there were a bomb in the bag and it exploded when I put it in the hold?”

When Anh asked Tuyen to repeat herself, she said she was only joking. But the flight attendant reported the remarks to chief pilot Ajay Trayan, who then halted the flight for safety reasons.

All 171 passengers returned to the terminal to wait three hours for security checks. After those yielded no explosives, officials handed Tuyen over to investigators.

Vietnam Airlines said the delay forced it to suspend three flights, losing more than VND304 million (US$14,600).

In court, Tuyen repeated her defense that she was only joking. She told the court her fa ... Xem thêm