On March 31, the HCM City Fatherland Front Committee and Department of Education and Training released the results of the survey on education socialization, pointing out the ‘hole’ in the tuition scheme in state-owned schools.

The HCM City Fatherland Front Committee has found that the tuition scheme has become backwards. Meanwhile, the tuition levels now applied by schools prove to be too different.

Le Hieu Dang, Deputy Chairman of the city’s Fatherland Front Committee, said that inequality has existed in state-owned schools. 12^th class students of the Le Quy Don High School pay the tuition of VND 900,000 a month, while the schools in the suburb areas of the city collect between VND 15,000-20,000 a month. As such, there exists a big gap of 60 times between the tuition applied by top schools and less well known schools.

Nguyen Viet Dung, the member of the survey team, said that there exists the clear difference in the tuition levels applied by ‘star’ schools and less well known schools. In district 3 of HCM City, Phan Sao Nam and Kien Thiet Secondary School are seriously lacking students, as students prefer going to ‘top schools.’

Nursery schools, kindergartens out of control

According to the HCM City Education and Training Department, some 107,000 children are going to privately-run nursery classes and kindergartens, while 147,000 children are going to state-owned kindergartens. In the education socialization strategy, the city will raise the number of children going to non-state nursery schools and kindergartens to 58% and 54% by 2010, respectively.

According to Dang, it seems that non-state education establishments have not been put under control. Meanwhile, Nguyen Thi Yen Thu, Chairman of the Former Teachers’ Association of the city, said that non-state nursery schools have been mushrooming, and many of the schools do not have qualified teachers.

Nguyen Viet Dung questioned that “There are 690 private run nursery schools, not including household run nursery classes, while there is no specific division in charge of supervising the non-state establishments. How can we well manage the establishments then?”

Huynh Cong Minh, Director of the HCM City Education and Training Department, said that the budget for education of HCM City in 2009 may account for more than 22% of the total budget, 80% of which will be used to pay to teachers. With the education socialization, the difference in tuition levels of schools proves to be unavoidable.

Minh said that most of the state-owned schools in the city are operating under the mode of finance self-control. The schools can still get money from the budget (30-60% of total expenses), while they also collect tuition from students to cover expenses. Therefore, the schools are not allowed to set overly high tuitions like privately-run or people-founded schools.

Meanwhile, Dang on the one hand said that education socialization proves to be the good policy, but on the other hand said that it is necessary to put the benefit of the majority of labourers as the top priority. The state needs to create the most favourable conditions for people to enjoy the best education services.

VietNamNet/LD

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