Regarding the case of Xuan Mai Primary School (Chuong My District, Hanoi ) hiding excess textbook money for more than a year before returning it, on June 17, Thanh Nien reporter had an interview with Ms. Nguyen Thi Kieu Oanh, Principal of Xuan Mai Primary School.
Xuan Mai Primary School - where the incident occurred
PHOTO: DINH HUY
Ms. Oanh admitted that the school's board of directors and homeroom teachers of some classes had made mistakes, leading to the above incident.
The female principal said that after receiving feedback from parents and the press in recent days, the school convened a meeting with the board of directors, homeroom teachers and related parties to investigate and see if the feedback was accurate and where the problems were.
Through review, the school determined that there were about 626 students/23 classes who had not received their extra textbook money back after 1 year.
For grade 2 textbooks, the change is 37,000, grade 3 is 16,000 and grade 4 is 5,000.
The difference in price for a set of textbooks according to the school's calculation
PHOTO: NGUYEN TRUONG
At the meeting, the teacher responsible for publishing the school’s books reported on the registration and payment process for textbooks. Accordingly, at the end of April each year, the publisher will send the book prices to the school for students and parents to voluntarily register.
Parents register to buy books through the homeroom teacher of the class. The homeroom teacher compiles and sends it to the distribution department, then sends the registration to the publisher. After having the book list, parents will pay the homeroom teacher.
By May, the books are delivered to the school and distributed to students. At this time, the price of the books has been adjusted and is lower than the registration price in April. Some books that have not been distributed to all students will be distributed gradually until August.
According to Ms. Oanh, at the board meeting in early August to prepare for the new school year, the school learned that the price of textbooks was different from the price paid by parents in grades 2, 3, and 4. The school directed homeroom teachers to check and compare to return the excess money to parents.
Regarding the content of some books that are different from the books that parents have registered for and are cheaper, Ms. Oanh explained that the school chooses books that develop capacity to suit the neweducation program.
In addition, experts in the school also commented that the workbooks have programs similar to textbooks, so choosing books for capacity development would be better. Therefore, the school bought 4 more books, each book was 5,000 VND cheaper than the books parents registered.
"We also instructed teachers to return the extra money in August and notify parents. However, the school's inspection process is still not close. The homeroom teachers are busy with many jobs and forget, so they only return it when parents remind them at the year-end parent meeting," said Ms. Oanh.
Ms. Oanh affirmed that, through the incident, the homeroom teachers admitted their mistakes, directly apologized and returned the excess money to the parents. The school will continue to monitor the return of excess money to the parents until it is complete.
The difference in amount parents calculate
PHOTO: DINH HUY
Previously, on June 16, many parents whose children study at Xuan Mai A Primary School accused the school of collecting more money for textbooks from students in grades 1, 2, and 3 (currently grades 2, 3, and 4) than they should have paid for more than a year before returning them.
According to the parents' calculations, the difference in price for a set of 4th grade books is 67,500 VND, 3rd grade books is 80,000 VND, and 2nd grade books is 102,000 VND. The total cost of all 3 sets of books will be very large, but they have not received any notice about this issue. After the parent meeting at the end of May 2025, some parents were upset and posted the incident on Facebook.
Afterwards, the homeroom teachers of many classes whose parents demanded money returned the change. However, many parents still refused to accept it due to lack of transparency.
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/vu-phu-huynh-len-facebook-doi-tien-thua-sach-giao-khoa-nha-truong-nhan-loi-185250617221042182.htm
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