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The 2025 Vietnamese school-leaving exam format: three parts, and how to write each

The 2025 paper mixes multiple choice, four-statement true/false and short numeric answers in one exam. They are marked differently, so they are written differently.

From 2025 the school-leaving exam uses one three-part structure across its multiple-choice subjects. The thing that matters is not the question count but that the three parts are marked in three different ways — so a paper written like an older one looks right and pitches wrong.

Part I — Multiple choice

Four options, one correct, all-or-nothing marking. This is the most familiar part and the easiest to write carelessly: distractors written to fill space measure elimination skill rather than knowledge. Each wrong option should correspond to a mistake students actually make.

Part II — Four true/false statements

One shared context, four statements, each answered true or false. Marks scale with how many are right rather than all-or-nothing, so this part discriminates more than Part I. The four should run easy to hard and must not depend on each other: if (b) is only true when (a) is, one mistake costs two marks and the question measures something other than what it intended.

Part III — Short answer

Students compute a numeric answer and shade it in. There is nothing to guess from, so this part measures real calculation. Two things must be settled while writing: units and rounding. A question whose answer is 3.75 against a key that says 3.8 costs every correct student a mark, and that only surfaces after marking.

The slowest part of writing a three-part paper is not the content but the bookkeeping: numbering continuously across three parts, keeping the key aligned with each paper code, and printing student and teacher versions from one source. That is work to hand to a tool.

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