Vietnam: The exam questions for recruitment of officials and public employees must be accurate and clear

According to Clause 2 Article 13 of the Regulations issued together with the Circular No. 6/2020/TT-BNV of the Ministry of Home Affairs of Vietnam, general requirements when developing the exam to recruit officials and public employees are as follows:

- Ensuring accuracy, science, clear text and sentences;

- The exam questions must be suitable with the content of the exam subject, ensuring thinking, inferring, synthesizing, analyzing, avoiding rote learning; 

- The written test must clearly state the score of each test question;

- Exam questions must clearly have the word "END" at the end of the test and must specify how many pages (for exam questions with 02 pages or more);

- Each exam and subject in the officials and public employment recruitment exam, officials promotion exam, and public employees professional title promotion exam must have official exam questions, backup exam questions with answers and specific marking instructions.

In addition to the general requirements, for each part of the exam, the following requirements must also be met:

For the essay test (written test):

- Based on the requirements of the job position to be recruited or the requirements of professional standards of the officials class, the professional title of the officials to be promoted, the exam board is responsible for composing questions, giving instructions for marking and marking answers. Exam marking instructions, test marking answers are prepared according to each question and have a detailed scale of up to 5 points. In case of exam marking instructions, the detailed marking answers that are lower than 5 points will be considered and decided by the Chairman of the Council.

- The content of the questions, instructions for marking, and the answers for marking the exam after being drafted by the head of the exam board will be reviewed and proposed by the head of the examination committee and proposed a plan for correction and correction (if necessary); the review of questions, instructions for marking, and answers for marking exams are done by other members of the exam board. After organizing the review, the head of the exam board organizes random selection of questions to combine into different essay questions (with instructions for marking the exam and corresponding marking answers), make sure there are at least 03 different exam questions, then, the head of the exam committee will autograph each version of the exam question paper, seal it, and report it to the chairman of the board for consideration and decision on approval of the official exam question and the backup test.

For multiple-choice test:

- The formulation of questions used for multiple-choice (paper-based) tests must ensure that the number of questions developed is at least 3 times higher than the total number of questions prescribed for each test section or subject. The Chairman of the Examination Council and the Head of the Examination Committee shall be responsible before the law in case the number of questions is not correct as prescribed above.

- The head of the exam committee organizes for the members of the exam board to evaluate each multiple-choice exam question in accordance with the requirements of the candidate position or requirements on the professional standards of the officials ranks, the professional titles of the public employees to be promoted. After final correction, the head of the exam board organizes to randomly draw questions to form a multiple-choice test with many different versions of the test questions, to sign each version of the test, seal and report to the Chairman of the Council to consider and decide on the official exam questions and the backup test questions of the exam.

The formulation of exam questions for multiple-choice (computer-based) tests shall comply with the provisions of Article 19 of this Regulation.

For the interview an practice test:

The content of the interview and practice must be based on the requirements of the job position to be recruited, and the knowledge, skills, qualifications and capabilities of the candidate must be assessed. The Chairman of the Examination Council considers and decides on the pre-construction of interview and practice questions to unify the implementation; members of the Procuracy, books and records are asked for more content related to the job position to be recruited. The method of scoring interviews and practice must be approved by the Chairman of the Council before implementation.

View more details at the Circular No. 6/2020/TT-BNV of the Ministry of Home Affairs of Vietnam, effective from January 20, 2021.

Thuy Tram

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