Endemic corruption

What is the extent of the criminality? Since when has the crime persisted? Why were all irregularities unknown to law enforcement agencies until abnormalities emerged? How much money has been given and taken as bribes? How many painstaking students have been stripped of opportunities at top-tier universities to leave their slots to unqualified ones? Who else are to blame? And, where else has the chronic epidemic spread to but yet to be identified?

Such numerous questions are surfacing when police in Son La Province last Saturday pressed charges against six education officials and teachers, and two police officers for their roles in the conspiracy to alter test scores of students. Earlier, authorities in Hoa Binh and Ha Giang provinces nearby had already prosecuted and detained many educators and teachers for similar crimes.

The scandal was brought to daylight when the final scores of students in the three hinterland provinces were announced and seen abnormally high, far exceeding the national average and beating the scores of students in major learning hubs like Hanoi and HCMC. As public suspicion grew, inspections ensued.

As covered in local media, the police of Son La Province wrapped up their first phase of investigating the case of cheating at the graduation exam last June. Indicted in the prosecution are several senior education officials, including deputy director of the provincial education department Tran Xuan Yen, three officials at the provincial testing and quality assessment office, and two senior police officers for their conspiracy to alter students’ scores.

The indicted people are alleged to have withdrawn the test papers of 44 students, and altered the answers at a private home to make them match those given by the education ministry after the exam. Even after correcting the students’ answers and finding out that the scores of certain test papers did not match the total scores requested, these people once again managed to change the scores right at the workplace.

Tran Xuan Yen told investigators that he helped 13 students to have scores changed while Nguyen Thi Hong Nga, an expert at the testing and quality assessment division, helped 16 others, says Tuoi Tre. Yen gave the instructions on altering scores, while Nga and some other accomplices performed the job, with the assistance of two police officers entrusted to supervise the process.

Yen also revealed that among the 13 students he helped to change scores, eight were referred to him by Hoang Tien Duc, director of the provincial Department of Education, a claim vehemently denied by the top educator of the province, according to the news site Nguoi Dua Tin.

Before Son La’s high-school exam scandal is unveiled, irregularities in the neighboring provinces of Hoa Binh and Ha Giang have also been announced. In Hoa Binh Province, as many as 64 students had their scores revised up, while in Ha Giang, up to 114 students had their scores altered, the news site zing.vn reports. Many of the students had their scores revised up by staggering numbers to ensure that they qualified for certain elite schools. Most of those students are children or relatives of senior officials in State agencies, or entrepreneurs in the localities.

According to Tuoi Tre’s investigative report, a person implicated in the ring told police that the average bribe for changing each student’s scores is VND1 billion, and during the interrogation process, some have submitted the monies illegally earned. In Hoa Binh, Do Manh Tuan of the testing and quality assessment office admitted to taking VND550 million for his illegal act of altering scores, according to Tien Phong.

Although Son La police caution that bribe-taking accusations have not been established, pending further investigation in the next phase, experts point out signs of that severe corruption.

In Lao Dong, lawyers reason that if investigators can establish there was conspiracy between officials, parents and educators to adjust up scores, such people can still be subject to bribe giving and taking.

“It is almost impossible for educators to change the scores without kickbacks either in money or other benefits,” says Lawyer Dang Van Cuong of the Hanoi Bar Association in the paper. He furthers that “if educators willingly revised up scores for the children of officials or leaders, that action constituted the bribe-giving crime.”

Apart from those people implicated in the prosecution process, local media question the responsibility of top leaders of localities where the scams took place, or even that of the Ministry of Education. Nguyen Anh Tri, an NA deputy of Hanoi City, says in Lao Dong that leaders of the localities where the exam fraud took place must be held accountable or disciplined.

Son La Province’s Party Committee has ordered all parents whose children had scores altered to make explanations, but most stated they did not know why their children were done such a favor. Even Trieu Tai Vinh, the Party leader of Ha Giang Province whose daughter had the scores revised up, says in the news site Vietnamnet that he had nothing to do with such a scam.

Several lawmakers also stressed the responsibility – or the absence of it – on the part of the education ministry.

Deputy Nguyen Lan Hieu at the National Assembly sitting in Hanoi on May 30 vented his anger at the cheating, saying the responsibility must not be confined to the localities where the crimes took place.

“The education philosophy must be based on the principle of a scam-free environment,” he is quoted in Nguoi Lao Dong.

The news site vov.vn also hints at the education minister as being out of touch of all problems in the sector, especially after the exam ridden with fraud. Soon after the exam, Minister Phung Xuan Nha said in an online conference that “the exam was successful.”

Hoang Hai Van, a veteran journalist, refers to such corruption as black-market education. “Such fraud is not merely a loophole in education. It (the huge bribe) is just the starting price in the black market of diplomas and degrees, which itself is the starting ladder for the black market of positions and powers,” he says in Vietnamnet.

As fraud in education in the three blacklisted provinces point to systemic or endemic corruption, given the participation of various stakeholders from top educators and teachers to State officials and entrepreneurs, the hurtful and painful questions mentioned early on remain to be answered.

In a commentary, Vietnamnet says the scandal is the prelude to a greater tragedy for the education sector, as what has been revealed is just the tip of a huge iceberg. Now that many corrupt educators throughout the system have been named, the biggest question is whether we can still have hopes in a sector of utmost national importance like education, says the online paper.