Ten is the highest level in the Vietnamese grade scale, which is given to excellent pieces of school works. However, students now have become tired of receiving 10 grades from teachers.

On the first days at schools, students all get excited when they receive 10 grades from teachers for their school works. Most of the students would show off the good marks to their parents, because these should be seen as an excellent learning achievement.

However, students later do not feel joyful when they get 10 marks any more. The problem is that they can get 10 marks for school works every day. And the 10 grade is given not only to a few students. Up to 2/3 of primary schools in big cities can get 10 marks every day.

Nowadays, when a parent asks his child about the learning records, the child would say: “of course I get 10”. Every student would feel ashamed if he cannot get 10 for the tests or exams.

In principle, 7 or 8 grade is given to the “good” works, and 5-6 marks mean the students are at “average” level. However, nowadays, 7 or 8 marks would not make students and their parents satisfactory, while 5-6 would be dishonorable for them.

The Ministry of Education and Training has many times called on to fight against the “achievement disease” in schools (students are appreciated higher than their actual ability). However, the problem has not been settled at all.

At schools, teachers like giving excellent marks to students to show that their students improve every day thanks to their teaching. Meanwhile, parents and students only accept 9 or 10 grades, because lower marks would be the “problems.”

Experts have warned that the achievement disease would make students delude themselves. When receiving 10 grades, they would think that the lessons are too easy for them, and they believe that they are very good already and no need to learn hard. Meanwhile, parents would also entertain illusions about their talented children.

Some parents have complained on education forums that their children get so many 10 marks that made them surprised. “I am not sure about the learning capability of my son. He gets 10 marks every day. However, a friend of mine said that every student can get 10 marks nowadays,” a woman complained.

The woman said she fears that one day, her child would get lower marks, and he would be “shocked” because of this and dares not go to school any longer.

She has every reason to worry about that. This happens that many students suffer from the crisis of conscience since they get bad marks from exams, while they always got good marks at the lessons in class.

Local newspapers have recently reported the cases of students, who decided to give up school because of the low learning results after the first semester. Other students reportedly tried to commit suicide because they felt ashamed with the unsatisfactory exam results.

In 2011, an excellent student in the central region killed himself after the university entrance exam, just because he did not do the exam questions well as expected. As he was a physics majoring student of a high school for the gifted, he vowed that he needs to obtain excellent marks from the exams, but this did not come true.

Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan, said on the online dialogue organized by the government information portal on March 6, that it should be considered a normal thing if children get 6-7 or 3-4 marks. He admitted that his child at the school also sometimes gets 3-4 and he does not punish the child for this.