Anti-overcharging in schools

This weekend, my child's school held a parent-teacher conference. What was unusual was that the contributions were sent early by the homeroom teacher to the parents in the general Zalo group, along with an official dispatch from the school and local authorities to rectify the collection at the beginning of the new school year 2023-2024. The matter is worrying again because the over-collection from previous school years seems to have been largely eliminated at the beginning of this school year.

I still remember that in previous school years, there were contributions that made me and many other parents quite dissatisfied, but we accepted to "swallow the bitter pill" and did not dare to speak up. I was afraid that I would become an exception in the group of parents in the class, and on the other hand, I was worried that my child would be affected if I spoke out against unreasonable expenses such as air conditioning and curtains. Even though parents contributed to these expenses every year, the air conditioning was still working well; the curtains were still new and did not need to be replaced...

More than 10 days ago, Thanh Mien III High School had to go to the press because it collected nearly 9 million VND/student. This is not a small amount of money for many families in the city, not to mention a school located in the middle of the countryside. There are some fees that exceed the prescribed amount such as drinking water, student cards, electronic contact books... 2 fees that were not collected according to the correct procedures, including money from sponsored activities (socialized) and money from the parents' association fund. If parents do not boldly speak up and the press does not get involved, it will be difficult for anyone to know about the situation of overcharging in the school and the wrong fees will be naturally ignored.

Fighting against overcharging in schools is an urgent requirement and needs to be taken seriously. First of all, there must be people who are brave enough to speak up and report such incidents as the recent incident at Thanh Mien III High School.

Schools also need a Parents' Representative Board that is fair, straightforward, and ready to point out unreasonable fees to prevent overcharging, affecting students and parents' trust in the school. When there is an impartial Parents' Representative Board, plans and fees outside of regulations will be discovered right from the beginning of the school year.

A clean educational environment needs to be built, democracy must be promoted. Do not let the Board of Directors become a place of privilege. School Boards need to strengthen inspection and supervision, not collude with the Parents' Representative Board to collect illegal fees. In the parent meeting at the beginning of the school year, schools need to ask teachers to disseminate Circular No. 55/2011/TT-BGDDT on the regulations of the Parents' Representative Board so that parents can clearly understand, avoiding the situation of being lured by this Representative Board to pay unreasonable fees, outside of regulations.

Localities and units can set up hotlines to receive information from parents reporting incorrect fees and commit to keeping the information of those reporting confidential, as Hai Duong Newspaper or Kinh Mon Town People's Committee have done... This will create opportunities for many parents to boldly report, thereby preventing the "disease" of overcharging in schools early on.

Localities in the province need to strengthen annual inspections and checks on the methods of collecting voluntary fees, and strictly handle heads of educational institutions that allow overcharging as directed by the Provincial People's Committee on the afternoon of September 12. When everyone fights, reflects and promptly handles violations, there will be no more overcharging at the beginning of the new school year.