\n\u201cSchool records do not have anything to do with the participation of the candidates\u201d in the contest, said Duong Xuan Nam, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Tien Phong and head of the organizing board of Miss Vietnam 2008.
\nVietnamese newspapers reported Thursday that Tran Thi Thuy Dung, 18, had not graduated from high school after blogs posted images of transcripts and a diploma showing Dung receiving grades in courses classmates said she had dropped. The diploma was signed by the school\u2019s principal.
\nAt a press conference Friday, Nam said that while regulations of Vietnam\u2019s Ministry of Culture and Information require pageant contestants to have graduated from high school, the Miss Vietnam rules permitted candidates who were still studying to enter.
\n\u201cThis is our fault,\u201d Nam said. He said the pageant organizers thought a regulation demanding participants to be high-school graduates had been amended to allow contestants with a \u201chigh school education.\u201d
\nChu Tien Duc, an official at the government office in charge of cultural issues, said the Miss Vietnam board had violated government regulations and would have to answer to the Ministry of Culture.
\nBut Duc insisted that a review of the profile Dung submitted for the contest showed she \u201chad not been dishonest or deceitful.\u201d
\nThe government\u2019s defence of Dung at the press conference suggested she would not be asked to give up her crown and might be allowed to continue her plans to compete in the Miss World 2008 contest.
\nBut Le Quan Tan, head of the High School Department at the Ministry of Education, objected to allowing a pageant winner with fake credentials to keep her crown.
\n\u201cYou cannot say your education level is high school if you have not graduated,\u201d Tan said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure about this case. But if it\u2019s true, then you don\u2019t deserve the title you have been given.\u201d
\nIn previous years, corruption in Vietnamese schools, including buying of grades and cheat sheets for tests, has been rampant. Since an answer-buying scandal in 2006 in a high school near Hanoi, teachers said corruption has declined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"