Hanoi(VNA) - This year, the Ministry of Education and Training will decide minimumentrance scores for only teacher training institutions while minimum entrancescores for other universities, colleges and vocational schools will bescrapped.

This is a new point in the ministry’s recentlyannounced draft circular on university enrolment.

The move aims to ensure quality of teachertraining institutions and relieve public concern, especially after many studentswith low examination results were recently admitted to teacher traininginstitutions.

The change will also mean that more studentswill have opportunity to attend universities.

Universities, especially private ones or lesspopular ones, should find it easier to enroll enough students.

Besides using high school exams for universityadmission, universities and colleges could organise their own exams to selectstudents suitable to their needs and goals.

According to the draft, teacher traininginstitutions can consider university admission to students with goodperformance in 12th grade. Colleges and vocational schools can consideradmission to students with average studying performance.

Students from high schools for gifted studentscan be admitted to teacher training institutions if they earned first, secondor thirds prizes in contests at province, national or international levels.

In previous years, only students with nationalor international prizes received the incentive.

Another new regulation in this year’s universityenrollment is that universities, colleges and vocational schools are notallowed to enroll if they don’t publicise how many of their students get jobswithin 12 months of graduating.

They also have to publicise information on theirfacilities including classes, labs, equipment and their staff.

In Vietnam, students are classified into threeareas to get extra points for their high school graduation and universityentrance exams based on their locations and differences in geographicsocio-economic development.

Previously, students from Area 1 – remote,mountainous, island or disadvantaged communes – received 1.5 points added totheir exam results. Students from Area 2 – suburban districts received 0.5points, rural areas received 1 point. Students from Area 3 – inner districts ofbig cities – did not receive an extra point.

This year, the extra points for students fromArea 1, Area 2 – suburban districts and Area 2- rural areas are 0.75, 0.25 and0.5 respectively.

Last June, more than 866,000 Vietnamese studentstook the 2017 national high school exam, the results of which are used for bothhigh school graduation and university admission.-VNA