Students join in the competition on Sunday. — VNS Photo

HCM CITY (Biz Hub) — About 1,500 contestants representing 260 school teams on Sunday joined the national qualification round of the Microsoft Office Specialist World Champion (MOSWC) 2015, which is being held at competition sites in Ha Noi, Hai Phong, Thai Nguyen, Hue, HCM City and An Giang.

As the world's largest office computing contest, the competition aims to help students and their schools become familiar with international-standard training programmes and ensure that the graduates can meet the requirements of the current tough labour market in a time of global integration and find a good job, Nguyen Vinh Hien, Vice Minister of Education and Training, said.

"We believe that MOSWC will not only nurture office computing learning among school and college students but also give them access to ever-evolving information technology," he said.

At the national qualification round, competitors took the MOS specialist test designed to evaluate users' skills with various Microsoft Office applications, including World 2010, Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010.

The 50 top contestants of all of the test components will secure a berth in the national finals on May 24 where they will take the MOS Expert and Scenario tests.

The three national top prize winners of the three components of the test will become Viet Nam's MOS 2015 ambassadors at the world championship finals in Dallas, Texas on August 9-12.

According to the competition's organising board, which includes the Ministry of Education and Training, IIG Viet Nam, Military Telecoms Group (Viettel) and Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, the competition this year sees the greatest number of competing teams (26) compared to 174 in 2014. Thus, the MOSWC this year for the first time has reached out to all 63 provinces and major cities in the country.

Over the last five years, Viet Nam has won many prizes from world finals, including a gold medal for Microsoft World 2010 at MOWC 2012 and MOSWC 2013; a bronze medal for Microsoft Word 2010, and two bronze medals for Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint 2010 at MOSWC 2014. — VNS