Curbing overcharging in schools

The Department of Education and Training of Ho Chi Minh City has just issued a document requesting the People's Committees of wards, communes, special zones, and heads of schools to strengthen the management of fees collected at the beginning of the school year. The above directive is not new compared to previous school years, many contents are repeated every year such as: schools are not allowed to arbitrarily set additional fees outside of regulations, not to combine many fees at the beginning of the school year, not to allow overcharging, and principals who violate will be strictly handled.

However, the determination is only... on paper, but in reality, every year social networks are "stirred up" with cases of schools illegally collecting fees.

On September 19, LNH Primary School (Ben Thanh Ward, Ho Chi Minh City) publicly posted a notice on the school's website about reviewing the activities of the Parent-Teacher Association of each class, and at the same time requested that the classes not collect any fundraising fees for the 2025-2026 school year. The reason is that previously, some classes of this school had implemented many collections that were not in accordance with the provisions of Circular No. 55/2011/TT-BGDDT (dated November 22, 2011) of the Ministry of Education and Training on the Charter of the Parent-Teacher Association.

Specifically, parents have to pay many fees that are not included in the regulations such as: wifi equipment installation fee for the classroom, graduation ceremony fee at the theater, reward for excellent students... It is worth mentioning that the operating budget of many classes clearly states "not required", but the amount each parent has to pay is divided equally with a total of more than 3.5 million VND/student/semester. At the beginning of the previous school year, a 4th grade teacher at CD Primary School (formerly District 1) was suspended from teaching after asking parents for support in buying a laptop.

Furthermore, in September 2023, a class at HH Primary School (formerly Binh Thanh District) collected more than 300 million VND from the class fund to support nannies to carry and clean food for students; buy microphones and speakers for teachers to teach...

Thus, despite the request for correction from the management agency, the beginning of the school year is the time when parents complain about the fees collected at the beginning of the year. When the media gets involved, the principal apologizes, and parents are refunded their money. However, while this class is corrected, overcharging occurs in other classes and other schools. Although the incidents take many forms and the amount of violations varies, no principal has been disciplined or prosecuted. This is the reason why many principals "turn a blind eye", allowing the Parent-Teacher Association of each class to become an "extended arm" for the school in implementing illegal fees.

To treat the “overcharging disease”, the education sector has now regulated what fees are allowed to be collected in schools, as well as how to handle violators. This is a necessary condition, but not enough. If violators are not severely punished, the regulations will only be “lifting high and hitting lightly”, and overcharging will continue to recur with increasingly sophisticated levels.

Therefore, in parallel with establishing inspection teams for revenue and expenditure at the beginning of the school year, management agencies need to have more drastic solutions such as: setting up a hotline number to promptly record feedback from parents; ensuring information on handling violators is public and transparent; organizing commendation and reward for good units, and at the same time having decisions to transfer and discipline violators to set an example for the whole industry.

Currently, the education sector is facing many important changes, directly deciding the effectiveness of improving the quality of teaching and learning. A series of policies demonstrate the high determination of the Party and the State, prioritizing education as the top national policy such as: free tuition for all public school students, the whole country unifying a set of textbooks, ensuring 2 sessions/day of teaching, along with the goals of improving output standards, foreign language and IT proficiency for students at all levels... In the context of limited budget, mobilizing resources in society is necessary, but this will become a "double-edged sword" if implemented without publicity and transparency, "the king's law is defeated by village customs", causing loss of trust in society.

ATTENTION

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/tri-lam-thu-trong-truong-hoc-post814757.html