Mr Nhan said negative phenomena occurred in the recent high secondary graduation exams in Ha Tay, citing “the achievement disease” as an example which has long been a problem in many localities at different levels.

To root out the social scourge, it requires greater efforts not only from teachers, parents and students but also from the entire society.

In the 2006-2007 academic-year, the Ministry of Education and Training will reconsider and re-arrange some emulation criteria for each unit so that educational establishments and schools will not focus too much on emulation ranks and titles through examination results.

To do that, it is necessary to encourage teachers to be content with their legitimate incomes.

Therefore, the Ministry of Education and Training will ask the State to allocate more budget for the education sector to help increase incomes for teachers, especially primary education teachers.

In the upcoming school year, all schools throughout the country will ask teachers to sign commitments to avoid acts of ignoring or assisting examination fraud.

At the meeting, Hoang Manh Hung, chairman of the association of Students’ Parents at the Phu Xuyen A High School admitted to contributing money collected from students’ parents to proctors during the high school graduation examination and apologised to the minister.

To fight examination fraud more effectively, the Ha Tay Provincial Party Committee will issue a resolution on the education issue in August.

After working with the provincial Party Committee, minister Nhan visited teacher Do Viet Khoa of Van Tao High School, who had bravely denounced fraud activities during the graduation examination.

Talking with the leader of the education sector, teacher Khoa expressed his disagreement with the disciplinary measures of the Ha Tay Department of Education and Training. He said that the measures are not strong enough to deter examination fraud.

Teacher Khoa also presented the minister a letter of 10 petitions to reform the education sector.

Earlier at a meeting of the National Education Council, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung asked the education sector to put an end to examination fraud by next year. Though this is a hard task, it has found a good starting point in Ha Tay province, a fraud hot spot.