The decision to take disciplinary action against Cuu, signed by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Wednesday, follows a similar punishment meted out by the province's Communist Party unit early last month.

According to the decision, Cuu had failed to fulfill his duties as head of the provincial National High School Examination's Steering Committee last year, resulting in an exam fraud in which the scores of 65 candidates were altered.

His violations were concluded to have resulted in very serious consequences, diminishing people's trust and robbing opportunities of other candidates to get into full-time universities, colleges.

Vietnam's Communist Party has four modes of punishment against members: reprimand, warning, demotion and expulsion. The government has a similar four-tier punishment structure, with the last one being dismissal from service.

Police in the northern Hoa Binh Province last year launched a criminal investigation into the case after evidence surfaced that a number of candidates' multiple-choice answer sheets had been altered to improve their results.

The investigation has led to the arrest of eight education officials and teachers, including Nguyen Quang Vinh, head of the Testing and Quality Assurance Unit under Hoa Binh's education department, and his deputy Diep Thi Hong Lien.

Last March, the education ministry released the candidates' revised results, in which the scores of 63 candidates in 2018 and one candidate in 2017 were lower than their original ones. Out of the affected candidates, 56 had the scores of their 140 multiple-choice answer sheets changed by 0.2-9.25 points out of 10.

Three police academies have returned 28 students from Hoa Binh Province to their families after their scores were lowered after revising, because it amounted to a violation of the pledge taken upon admission.

The Hanoi National University of Education has also removed one of its top students in 2018 after the student's total score after revision dropped to 2.5 percentage points below the minimum requirement.