Thousands of students expected to fail exams to attend state schools The high school entrance exam is expected to be very tough this year due to the sharp increase in the number of examinees. There will also be fewer available seats at state-owned schools, making admissions even more competitive.   Students in Hanoi will take exams on June 11-13. According to the Hanoi Education and Training Department, about 80,000 students have registered to attend the entrance exams to state-owned high schools, an increase of 10,000 students over the last year. There are no official statistics about the number of students registering to sit the entrance exams for schools for the gifted. Meanwhile, though many schools in Hanoi have been allowed to enroll 10-20 percent of students more, the number of seats at all local schools can satisfy 68 percent of the demand. This means that the schools can accommodate 50,000 students only, while the remaining 30,000 students would be refused by state-owned schools and they would have to go to non-state schools. Students have the right to apply to two state-owned schools. If they fail the entrance exam to the first school, they will be able to register to study at the other one, provided that they get at least a 1.5 score higher than the minimum scores required by the other school. The students who pass the exam to the schools of their first choice will not be allowed to enter the schools of their second choice. In HCM City, the state-owned high school entrance exam will take place on June 11-12, or 10 days earlier than initially scheduled. According to Hoang Le An, headmaster of the Nguyen Du Secondary School, 80 percent of students finishing 9th grade still go to school to attend exam preparation courses. In previous years, students had 1.5 months to prepare for the exam, while they now have one month only. A secondary school graduate complained that students have less time to prepare for exam this year than in previous years. Therefore, she fears the exam results would be unsatisfactory. Nguyen Minh Nhon, head of the Binh Thanh District Education sub-department, said in fact, secondary schools began preparing students for the entrance exam in early May. He said that students have at least one month and one week to review for the exam, just one week less than previous years; therefore, the exam rescheduling will not affect students. It is expected that 85,000 students in HCM City will attend the state-owned school entrance exam, while there are only 65,000 seats offered. According to the HCM City Education and Training Department Deputy Director Nguyen Thien Dat, the exam questions will mostly require knowledge students received when they were in the 9th grade. VietnamNet