Don't let another round of overcharging happen in the 2023-2024 school year.

A friend of mine told me that, just entering the second semester of the school year, his child's class started to collect contributions for the school. There were funds for the scholarship, the parents' association fund, the class fund, the air conditioning fee... Some of the funds were mentioned at the beginning of the school year but were just collected now, some of the funds were additional collections to serve the activities of the second semester. What made him upset was that there were funds that were agreed upon with the parents at the beginning of the year as A dong, but when collected, it was B dong, and B was larger than A. Another strange thing was that, although the regulations do not allow the Parents' Representative Board to collect on behalf of the school the funds to support facilities because this socialized source must be planned and organized by the school, the Parents' Representative Board of his child's class was still very active in this matter. When he brought his concerns to the school, he was given a clear explanation as to why some of the collections had to be increased, so his concerns were somewhat relieved.

His story reminds me of the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, when public opinion was abuzz about the unreasonable fee schedules of many schools in the province. Some schools that collected some fees at the beginning of the year contrary to regulations had to return the money to parents. In that situation, the collection at the beginning of the year was closely monitored by both management levels, press agencies and through feedback from parents. Therefore, many schools have temporarily stopped collecting some fees at the beginning of the school year.

As for why the Parents' Representative Committee of many classes still actively do work that is "not theirs" and why schools also let this exist, this is still a problem that not only my friend but many people are concerned about.

Objectively speaking, the facilities of many schools are still lacking, or have not reached the level desired by parents. For example, the standard for classrooms is not necessarily to have air conditioning, but many parents do not want their children to suffer from the heat, so they want to equip them with more. Sometimes, because they want to innovate teaching methods and increase the application of information technology, teachers want to use projectors to teach, but the school does not have enough funds to equip each class with a set... If the school is invested in spacious and adequate facilities and is sponsored to organize activities for students, there will be no need for parents to donate more. However, the problem is that equipping classrooms with more equipment is not always the desire of all parents. Many families are still in difficulty and they think that it is not necessary to do so, but because the minority must obey the majority, when the whole class decides, they are forced to follow and become frustrated. Meanwhile, many school administrators are lazy in researching, do not properly implement regulations on social mobilization, and even leave this task to the Parents' Representative Committee to avoid responsibility. And, there are other sensitive reasons...

To prevent overcharging, it is necessary for all levels to pay more attention to investing in facilities and supporting teaching and learning activities for schools.

Why do "falls" still happen in schools? Maybe it's because strict management and supervision are only implemented thoroughly and decisively at the beginning of the school year. Most parents are still hesitant and do not express their opinions and suggestions to the school and teachers about unreasonable fees for fear that their children will be "affected".

Recently, many cases of violations in the collection of fees at the beginning of the year have been discovered thanks to the press and the authorities' involvement through the reflection of parents. This shows that parents need to frankly express their opinions if they find the collection amounts unsatisfactory; promptly report information to the competent authorities for handling when violations are discovered.